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FTR#1379 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1380 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: NB: This description contains material not available in the original.
These programs highlight a disturbing synthesis of substantive, factual inquiries (the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK, Sr.) with proto-fascistic ancient aliens built the pyramids, ancient astronauts, Eric von Daniken bs.
Holocaust deniers have long hovered around the edges of the assassination research. Once one realizes that, in fact, Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy in the JFK assassination, James Earl Ray was a patsy in the assassination of Martin Luther King and Sirhan Sirhan was a [mind-controlled] patsy in the assassination of RFK, Sr. it leaves many in a relativistic political/intellectual universe. They wonder: “Maybe the Holocaust didn’t happen?”
Discussion and Analysis Includes: Amaryllis Fox’s role as intelligence adviser to the Office of Management and Budget and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Review Board; Tulsi Gabbard’s support for India’s attack on Pakistan; Modi’s networking with the RSS; An incisive article noting the possibility of U.S. and/or U.K involvement in the terrorist incident in Kashmir; Review of the relationship between RFK, Jr. daughter-in-law and campaign manager Amaryllis Fox and Tulsi Gabbard; Tulsi Gabbard’s profound relationship with the Hindutva fascist organization RSS (the organization that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi); Review of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi; Review of Gabbard’s membership in the Hare Krishna Cult; Discussion of the New Age, the UFO disinformation gambit; the fascist/Nazi roots of the alternative archaeology/“Our Brothers from Space” meme; The recent presentation of disinformation concerning “chambers beneath the Pyramids of Egypt” (proving that Space Aliens built the Pyramids); the approval of that b.s. by numerous figures in “Team Trump” including Anna Paulina Luna, heading up “inquiries” into the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, 9/11, UFO’s; Jeffrey Epstein.
1.Amaryllis Fox Kennedy — Wikipedia
. . . . Amaryllis Fox Kennedy (born Amaryllis Damerell Thornber; September 22, 1980)[1][2] is an American former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and writer serving since 2025 as the Associate Director for Intelligence and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and as a member of Donald Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board.[3][4] She served in the CIA from 2002 to 2010. . . .
2a.“With You As You Hunt Down...”: US Spy Chief To PM Modi On Kashmir Attack
The US spy chief extended Washington’s full support to New Delhi and told Prime Minister Modi that “We are with you and support you as you hunt down those responsible for this heinous attack.”
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Written by:Abhishek Chakraborty
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Apr 25, 2025
2b.India should tread warily on battlefield — Indian Punchline
. . . . Later in the evening yesterday, Modi also received Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat at his residence in a gesture “emphasising national interest over protocol,” as a national daily noted. However, there should be no misconceptions over how Bhagwat’s mind is working. Five days back, he had remarked, “We hope for a strong response (to Pahalgam attack.)” . . . .
2c.Did Western Intelligence Play a Role in the Latest Terrorist Attack in Kashmir?
India and Pakistan are teetering on the precipice of war following the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, which sits in the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir, that left 22 tourists dead. The timing of this attack — coming on the heels of Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit to India — raises some uncomfortable questions that merit an answer… Were Western intelligence agencies involved? For what purpose? Let me propose a couple of plausible motives… spark tensions with China and create turmoil within BRICS.
While many uninformed Westerners might scoff at the idea, Pakistan’s Defense Minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, accused India of staging a false flag. But Asif didn’t stop there. During an interview with Sky News, Asif admitted that Pakistan has been supporting and funding terrorist groups for about three decades, describing this as “doing the dirty work for the United States and the West, including Britain.” He acknowledged that this was a “mistake” and said Pakistan has suffered greatly as a result, especially by aligning with the West during the Soviet-Afghan war and the post‑9/11 US-led war on terror. Asif stated that if Pakistan had not joined these efforts, its international record would have been “unimpeachable.”
Asif emphasized three key points:
Collaboration with Western Powers: Asif stated, “We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades, you know, the West, including Britain.” This comment was made in the context of discussing Pakistan’s historical role in supporting Western-led initiatives, which he suggests have contributed to the current challenges with terrorism.
Training of Mujahideen: Reflecting on Pakistan’s past decisions, Asif acknowledged that the country had trained Mujahideen fighters during the Afghan-Soviet war, stating, “We prepared them and now they have become terrorists.” He emphasized that Pakistan should not have engaged in such activities at the behest of other nations.
Critique of U.S. Military Actions: Asif has criticized the United States for its military interventions, noting that Pakistan has suffered due to its alliance with the U.S. He pointed out that the U.S. left behind high-tech weapons in Afghanistan, which have contributed to the rise in terrorism within Pakistan.
The attack in Pahalgam, at a minimum, was designed to disrupt further development of the area as a tourist destination. Still, in light of Asif’s remarkable confession, I cannot rule out something more nefarious by my former outfit or by Britain’s MI‑6.
The conflict between Pakistan and India heated up quickly on Tuesday, with India hitting alleged terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan retaliating with artillery and missile strikes. Following this spike in violence, things appear to have calmed down. Iran’s Foreign Minister Aragchi is in the region, trying to mediate. I suspect that he is doing this with the full backing and support of both Russia and China. . . .
3.Did you hear the incredible news? Earth-shattering news. Or, rather, history-shattering news: A pair of researchers has uncovered evidence of a vast underground city beneath the pyramids of Giza. A previously undiscovered subterranean complex that is many times deeper than the height of the pyramids. So vast that it has observers pointing to the discovery as powerful evidence of a civilization with advanced capabilities that has been lost to history. Or even aliens.
It’s that significant a discovery. Or at least it would have been that significant a discovery had it been based on verifiable scientific methods and withstood peer review. Instead, as we’re going to see, the study is based on claims that experts say simply aren’t feasible given the technology used by the two researchers to map out the underground structures. The two researchers – Corrado Malanga, from Italy’s University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde in Scotland – had already published a separate peer-reviewed paper in October 2022 in the scientific journal Remote Sensing which found hidden rooms and ramps inside the Khafre pyramid. But this latest non-peer-reviewed paper purports to reveal underground structures on a much larger scale. Malanga is a UFOlogist and has appeared on YouTube shows about aliens. Biondi is a specialist in radar technology. According to Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology, any claims based on the radar technology they used are ‘a huge exaggeration’ since it’s not possible for the technology to penetrate as deeply into the ground to back up the claims they are making.
And yet, as we’re going to see, the reporting on these ‘findings’ includes breathless reports in The Daily Mail with quotes from ‘experts’ about how the whole history of Egyptian history has been rewritten and evidence of advance pre-flood civilizations is about to be revealed. Or maybe it’s evidence of an alien origin for the pyramids. Perhaps the pyramids really are ancient power plants! Yep, that’s the spin this story has been getting from the Daily Mail, including quotes from Joe Rogan about how ‘mind-blowing’ a development this all is or quotes from ‘researcher Jay Anderson’ who has concluded that “The pyramid itself was already a massive red flag in the ancient Egyptian historical narrative but now, with this discovery, I think it’s impossible to say that the Egyptians we’ve been taught about built these structures…It provides the most extraordinary evidence for a pre-flood era civilisation that was flourishing in a way that we can scarcely comprehend.”
It’s also rather notable that, of the two Daily Mail article below on this story, it’s only the article from March 22 that even mentions the fact that the study hasn’t been peer reviewed and has already been debunked by experts. The Daily Mail piece from March 30 makes no mention but instead run with the headline “Were the Pyramids built by aliens? Inside the bizarre conspiracy theory ‘backed’ by Elon Musk – after experts make astonishing discovery.” Of course, as we’ve seen, not only has Elon Musk promoted the ‘aliens built the pyramids’ meme but his maternal grandfather was utterly obsessed with discovering ‘lost cities’ in Southern Africa that would prove the existences of advanced non-black civilizations. The mainstreaming of the ‘lost civilization/alien astronaut’ narratives continues.
But as we’re going to be reminded of in the following 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center piece, the mainstreaming of the ‘lost civilization/alien astronaut’ narratives is hardly new. It’s been going on for decades. Centuries, if you factor in the reality that the notion of a lost white civilization that pre-dated the Native Americans on North America was a widely held view from the colonial era until the 20th Century. In fact, when President Andrew Jackson was justifying the ethnic cleansing and forced relocation of Native tribes, he cited the mythological extermination of this alleged ancient Aryan tribe at the hands of Native Americans as a kind of historical precedent for his action. Narratives wholly embraced by the Nazis’ anti-Enlightenment myths and continued percolating through the culture for decades. Flash forward to the 2000s, and we find outlets like the History Channel routinely platforming ‘lost civilization’ and ‘ancient alien’ narratives. Narratives still going strong today, thanks, in large part, to their now-routine media mainstreaming that has been going on for decades:
The modern far right is crisscrossed with pseudo-scientific research into lost Aryan super-civilizations, biblical giants, ancient astronauts and the occasional inter-dimensional alien.
On December 6, 1830, Andrew Jackson used his second State of the Union address to defend the Indian Removal Act, the administration’s sole legislative victory. He described the law promulgating the expulsion and resettlement of southeastern Native American tribes as the “happy consummation” of U.S. Indian policy. To his critics who “wept over the fate of the aborigines” —and who, it turned out, accurately predicted the horrors of the forced migrations known collectively to history as the Trail of Tears — Jackson offered an archeology lesson. Any “melancholy reflections” were ahistorical, he said, because the Indians were neither innocent victims nor first peoples, but perpetrators of what Jackson’s modern admirers might call “white genocide.”
Jackson knew this because the evidence was everywhere in plain sight.
“In the monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, we behold the memorials of a once-powerful race,” said Jackson, “exterminated to make room for the existing savage tribes.”
This reference to a “once-powerful race” was not lost on the American public of 1830. Every schoolboy and girl knew it to be the Lost Race of the Mound Builders, believed to be the continent’s original Caucasian inhabitants. From the colonial era into the twentieth century, it was widely accepted that certain earthen structures and burial grounds proved the existence of “white” or Indo-European peoples who settled North America only to be wiped out by the arrival of Jackson’s “savage (Asiatic) tribes.”
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In the early 1890s, the U.S. ethnologist Cyrus Vance discredited the theory in a series published by the Smithsonian Institution. But the idea of a pre-Colombian “white genocide” never disappeared. It survived in subcultures, influenced by the occult and Atlantis legends, which clung to theories of lost ancient super-civilizations that, curiously, always seemed to be racially “white.”
In recent decades, as evidence of a richer paleoamerican record than previously realized has come to light, Jackson’s “once-powerful race” has found a new generation of boosters on the far right, where fantasies of “white genocide” distantly past and currently unfolding are an animating obsession.
In the fractured and constantly cross-fertilizing galaxy of extremist conspiracy culture, the white Moundbuilders —now known on the far right as “the Solutreans” — share a stage with other characters from an ancient and racially glorious but “suppressed” past: ancient Nordic-looking astronauts, biblical Aryan giants, Nazi scientists under the South Pole, and the occasional inter-dimensional alien in league with the Jews.
Alt-History Goes Prime Time
Over the last decade, the History Channel has exploited and fueled the popularization of alternative archeology, or alt-history. Numerous programs on the network showcase ideas that, while not explicitly racist or anti-Semitic, have origins in colonial projects and have been championed (for a reason) by modern extremists.
Take “America Unearthed,” which aired between 2012 and 2015 on H2, a defunct History Channel network. That show’s host, a geologist named Scott Wolter, promoted theories that ancient Celts and Scots settled North America and hybridized Native Americans centuries before Columbus. The details can be found in Wolter’s contributions to Lost Worlds of Ancient America, a 2012 anthology edited by Frank Joseph, born Frank Collin, founder of the National Socialist Party of America. (In 1993, following his expulsion from the party for “impure blood”, Collin became editor of Ancient American magazine and has authored dozens of books dealing with ancient “suppressed” history.) In another episode, when a guest professes admiration for the Knights of the Golden Circle, a group of wealthy Southerners who sought to create a hemispheric slave empire, Wolter just nods. (Wolter has denied that he or his ideas are racist, and claims to be politically liberal.)
Whatever the personal politics of the host, these shows serve as vectors for racist ideas and scholarship, argues the independent scholar Jason Colavito, who has been tracking this cultural crossover and amplification of fringe history for years. In books like Foundations of Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts, and Other Alternative Pasts, Colavito explores and debunks many of the ideas promoted on the History Channel and far right websites alike.
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Shows like “America Unearthed” are heavily discussed on white nationalist alt-history forums, as well as general far right political sites like Stormfront. They are routinely praised for introducing viewers to variations on the Solutrean Hypothesis (see below) and raising the profile of racist pseudo-scholarship.
Consider the H2 series “In Search of Aliens,” which, before its demise, promoted the work of Jan Udo Holey, a German writer whose antisemitic books have been banned across Europe. (Holey’s pen name, Jan Van Helsig, is a blunt Dracula reference, i.e. Jews are bloodsuckers.) The History Channel’s long-running series “Ancient Aliens,” meanwhile, features David Childress, whose books cite and build on the work of James Churchward, who promoted an ancient empire called the “lost continent of Mu,” whose “dominant race” was an “exceedingly handsome people, with clear white or olive skin.”
While the appeal of these theories has roots in Jacksonian justification for Manifest Destiny, their current manifestations are closely intertwined with the venomous persecution complexes that motivate the modern far right .
“Pseudo-histories feed the self-importance and aggrievement of neo-Nazis and alt-right folk,” says Benjamin Radford, a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry who has written widely on pseudo-history and claims of paranormal activity. “They feel their rightful place in the world has been denied them — by‘Big Archeology’, byJews, by an oppressive government.”
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The Nazi Connection
The basic tenets of alt-archeology and alt-history were foundational to the ideology and program of National Socialism, but the Nazis did not invent them. The Nazi belief in a pure Aryan race with a glorious ancient past and distinct genetic history was central to a transatlantic nineteenth-century occult scene (that featured a heavy German influence.) After Hitler assumed power, this belief was institutionalized in the form of the Ancestral Heritage and Teaching Society, or the Ahnenerbe, an alt-archeology research outfit founded by Heinrich Himmler and the Atlantis theorist Herman Wirth.
Under the banner of the Ahnerbe, Nazi explorers fanned out across Europe and the globe in search of relics holding (possibly supernatural) hints of ancient Aryan glory. In 1938, a team was dispatched to Iceland in search of the lost Aryan civilization of Thule, which Nazi leaders discovered in an Icelandic epic poem. Among the Nazis’ interests in Thule was the legend of a race of ancient Aryan giants. (Versions of this myth remain common among biblically focused alt-historians like Steve Quayle and L.A. Marzulli.)
Belief in these legends was possible because of the Nazis’ sharp rejection of the Enlightenment. Dismissing the science of racial diversification and the archeological record, they reveled in symbology, myths and legends of “pure” ancient kingdoms that conquered the world under its symbol, the swastika. (This, the Nazis believed, explained the symbol’s presence in both Native American and Indian art.)
The Solutreans and the Original “White Genocide”
In the U.S., the average member of the far right is likely more familiar with the modern version of Jackson’s Race of the Moundbuilders, known as the Solutreans.
The name is taken from a hypothesis first promoted in the 1930s by the American archeologist Frank Hibben, who discovered arrowheads in North America that pre-dated the earliest Native American culture known at the time, the Clovis. The arrowheads, argued Hibben, resembled those of the Solutreans, a Stone Age people who inhabited southwestern Europe. Most of the field quickly dismissed the similarity as meaningless, but Hibben found adherents among those yearning for a new and more scientifically respectable version of Jackson’s “once-powerful race.” For them, the arrowheads (and other contested findings) prove that “European” Solutreans migrated to America across the northern ice-shelf millennia before “the Mongoloids” (as Solutrean adherents are apt to describe Native Americans.)
There is a second punchline to white nationalists continuing to hold up the Solutreans as victims of a prehistoric white persecution drama: Most scholars believe the Solutreans preceded racial diversification, and their arrowheads are artifacts of a dark-skinned people not long out of North Africa.
Atlantis, Aliens & Ancient Astronauts
In 1882, a decade before the Smithsonian debunked the Race of the Moundbuilders, a Minnesota Congressman and writer named Ignatius Loyola Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. The book provided another and more elaborate theory of an Aryan-looking super civilization that diffused technology to the rest of the world. Donnell’s book, based on mentions of Atlantis by Plato, cut the template for the sci-fi-tinged lost white civilization theories now experiencing a revival on cable television and beyond.
But just as Atlantis theory gained traction following the debunking of the Moundbuilders, so have theories of ancient Aryan astronauts superseded Atlantis with the mapping of the oceans and their floors.
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In the 1960s and 70s, Erich von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin put a twist on myths about Aryan visitors from a lost civilization predating the last Ice Age. These visitors to Mesoamerica didn’t come from Atlantis but from the sky. Bestsellers like von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods (seven million sold and counting) popularized the idea that Aryan-looking aliens brought science and technology to primitive peoples around the world. In recent years, Graham Hancock has repackaged Ancient Astronaut Theory for a new generation in his bestselling Fingerprints of the Gods, and through steady work as a History Channel talking head.
Today’s far right is divided on Ancient Astronaut theory. On the one hand, it denies agency to brown-skinned peoples, and features Aryan-looking heroes, which they consider good things; but it also deprives ancient (human) Aryans of the accomplishments credited to them so lavishly in Atlantis and other theories.
Consider the case of Patrick Chouinard, a prolific writer who operates the alt-history sites RenegadeTribune.com and ancientaryans.com. (The latter site’s symbol, the Norse rune, was also the logo of the Nazi Ahnenerbe.) Like the Nazis, the sites are dedicated to recapturing a lost, pure Aryan civilization —one respectful of, but not dependent on alien life. In September, Chouinard cast a critical eye on the upcoming tenth season of the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens, in an article titled “Are Ancient Aliens Theorists Selling Our People Short?”
Chouinard believes they are. He cites an old episode of the H2’s In Search of Aliens in which the hosts, Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress (see above), explore the alleged mystery of some “elongated skulls” discovered in Peru. Chouinard scoffs at the hosts’ conclusion that the skulls belonged to aliens. Rather, he argued, reconstructions “show a very Nordic facial structure with [a] huge cranium.” This could be proof, furthermore, of “a separate branch of the White race the went along its own evolutionary path over 5,000 years ago.”
And who, you might wonder, does Chouinard believe is behind the Ancient Alien Theory that is “selling his people short”?
“The Jews,” writes Chouinard, “are using … the ancient alien camp to confound our race to the point that we deny our own accomplishments. The White race did not need ancient aliens to build our ancient civilizations, or to found other civilizations in remote corners of the Earth. Our race is capable of so much more.”
In 2018, it is dangerous in alt-ancient history circles to completely discount Ancient Aliens. Chouinard knows this. Rather than risk alienating his readers, he concedes, “It is very possible that visitations from extraterrestrials did happen in ancient times, [but] I will not conclude that the majority of our accomplishments as a race can be attributed to extraterrestrials.”
UFOs & “Refracted” Anti-Semitism
Massive and hopelessly intricate cover-ups. Nefarious alien races with gnomish physical features. Tales of secret Nazi super-technologies. It was always inevitable that the UFO and far right scenes would end up in bed together. UFO culture cast a shadow over everything in the postwar years, and as noted above, the far right has never been a stranger to the supernatural.
In Culture of Conspiracy, the historian Michael Barkun locates the early 1990s as the decade this convergence accelerated. Books like William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse and journals published by Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn described UFO conspiracies that fit snugly into the New World Order conspiracy template, heavily influencing that decade’s militia movement. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was reportedly a fan of Cooper’s radio show.)
But the seeds of this union are much deeper in the postwar record. One of the most important early UFO writers in the early 1950s, William Dudley Pelly, was an American occultist and fascist; his most important disciple, George Hunt Williamson, produced Byzantine UFO theories that incorporated anti-Semitic themes. Williamson’s 1958 book, UFOsConfidential, claimed every government on earth was under the control of a handful of (mostly Jewish) “international bankers,” which for some reason the author believed included U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Pelley and Williamson’s successors are not always or even often so blatantly anti-Semitic. But the fingerprints of anti-Semites are visible in the works of influential modern UFO writers like Jim Marrs and Jim Keith. These fingerprints appear in what Barkun calls “refracted racism and anti-Semitism,” in which old tropes are repackaged as an episode of the X‑Files. This repackaging often includes not very subtle distinctions between “benevolent” aliens (tall, Aryan-looking) and “malevolent” aliens (short, grotesque, often in league with “international bankers”).
More than anyone else, the British conspiracist David Icke has popularized the Alien version of New World Order conspiracy. The former sportscaster’s elaborate theory is the Sgt. Peppers album-cover of the genre, featuring the Masons, the Vatican, the Illuminati, the House of Windsor —everyone is there. At the center of the theory is an alien race of lizard people from the fifth-dimension. Though Icke has always denied trafficking in anti-Semitism, he has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion —the famous forgery and foundational text of modern anti-Semitism —choosing to call it “The Illuminati Protocols.”
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Hollow Earth, Secret Nazi Labs & the South Pole
Another inevitable development in postwar conspiracy subculture was the rise of a belief in secret Nazi bases underneath Antarctica. The idea of a “hollow” or “inner” earth was a key tenet of nineteenth-century occultism, and in the postwar years it reemerged as a setting for escaped Nazi scientists working in secret technology and weapons labs.
The legend took root during the mid-1970s, nurtured by the Canadian neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel, who argued that Nazis invented flying saucers and had taken their breakthrough technology to bases deep under the South Pole.
The Third Reich was interested in a possible base at the South Pole, and a few high-level Nazis did escape to Argentina, whose national territory includes a slice of Antarctica extending to the South Pole. Zundel and his successors have infused these facts with Victorian inner-earth legends, and then marinated them over multiple viewings of the 1968 B‑flick, They Saved Hitler’s Brain. Versions of the theory remain popular on neo-Nazi alt-history sites, and in recent years British tabloids like the Mirror and Daily Star have found click-bait gold in spreading them.
The story’s persistence led Colin Summerhayes of Cambridge University’s Polar Research Institute to look into the matter. In a 2006 edition of The Polar Record, Summerhayes presented his heavily footnoted and researched conclusion that secret Nazi bases do not exist, and have never existed, on or below Antarctica.
As exhaustive as it was, it is unlikely Summerhayes’ study had much impact among the theory’s adherents. It was, after all, competing with an ever expanding glut of “hidden history” books, podcasts and websites. One of many such titles to appear that year was SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazi’s Incredible Secret Technology, penned by Joseph P. Farrell, a prolific alt-historian and regular on Red Ice Radio.
4. And that SPLC report from back in 2018 brings us to the following story that has received quite a bit of coverage in recent weeks. The kind of story that has advocates of both ‘ancient astronauts’ as well as ‘long lost advanced civilizations’ tittering with excitement: a pair of Italian researchers claim to have discovered a vast underground city beneath the pyramids of Giza. So vast is this previously undiscovered underground complex that a number of researchers are treating it like a paradigm-shattering discovery that should force a reinterpretation of the history of the Pyramids. That’s the narrative getting mainstream treatment in publications like The Daily Mail. Ancient non-advance people could not have built these vast structures. Only a lost advanced civilization could have done it. Or aliens:
They were not, so the polemic went, the work of ‘puny’ man, but instead those ‘giants of Mars’.
Yes, the Pyramids of Giza – those monuments to god-like splendour that have stood for more than 4,000 years – were built by aliens.
That was the ‘claim’ made by American astronomer Garrett P. Serviss in his 1898 book Edison’s Conquest of Mars.
Perceptive readers will have noted that Serviss’s work – an unauthorised re-write of HG Wells’ 1897 alien invasion novel The War of the Worlds – was fictional.
But it did popularise a theory that, even in more recent years, has continued to find traction.
In 2020, billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk drew the scorn of experts when he took to Twitter – the social network that he bought in 2022 for $44billion – to write: ‘Aliens built the pyramids obv’.
Now, the discovery this month that an ‘underground city’ lies in a ‘hidden world’ beneath Egypt’s most famous pyramids has again focused attention on the structures that have obsessed experts and amateurs alike for millennia.
Just what could the vast network, which descends more than a mile into the sands, have been used for?
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The largest of the three pyramids at Giza – the Great Pyramid – was built more than 4,500 years ago in around 2560BC for King Khufu, who was the second pharaoh of Ancient Egypt’s fourth dynasty.
Until the completion of Lincoln Cathedral in the 14th century, it was the tallest building in the world.
The pyramid, which was topped with a gold or electrum capping stone, was built as a sacred tomb for Khufu, who believed himself to be divine.
The other two pyramids, built for pharaohs Menkaure and Khafre, were constructed decades later.
The notion that the structures were built by or with the help of aliens gained further traction with Swiss author Erich von Däniken’s influential 1968 book Chariots of the Gods.
He argued that Giza’s Great Pyramid could not have been built without the help of advanced alien technology.
The author wrote: ‘If we meekly accept the neat package of knowledge that the Egyptologists serve up to us, ancient Egypt appears suddenly and without transition with a fantastic ready-made civilization.
‘Great cities and enormous temples, colossal status with tremendous expressive power, splendid streets flanked by magnificent sculptures, perfect drainage systems, luxurious tombs carved out of the rock, pyramids of overwhelming size – these and many other wonderful things shot out of the ground, so to speak.
‘Genuine miracles in a country that is suddenly capable of such achievements without recognizable prehistory!’
He added: ‘An artificial mountain, some 490 feet high and weighing 6,500,000 tons, stands there as evidence of an incredible achievement, and this monument is supposed to be nothing more than the burial place of an extravagant king!
‘Anyone who can believe that explanation is welcome to it…’
The late Belgian author Philip Coppens was similarly forthright in his 2011 book The Ancient Alien Question.
He said in one passage: ‘If aliens built the Great Pyramid, then it needs to be argued that they were also responsible for at least some of the other pyramids in ancient Egypt.’
But experts have rubbished any notion that beings from other planets might have been involved in the construction of the pyramids.
Speaking on the BBC’s History Extra podcast, British Egyptologist Professor Joyce Tyldesley said: ‘It’s almost almost sort of a bit like a form of racism, isn’t it, that these people couldn’t do it, so someone else must have done it.’
‘But I think there’s a bit more to it than that. Because prior to the idea of aliens helping build the pyramids, we had the idea that maybe people from Atlantis might have helped build the pyramids, and prior to that, we had the idea that God inspired builders to use the pyramid inch, a divinely inspired measurement to build the pyramids.
‘So I think it’s that there’s always been a long succession of theories about how the pyramids might have been built, and as one is sort of superseded by the other.
‘So it doesn’t just come out of nowhere. I think it’s a sort of changing and evolving belief as how the pyramids might have been built, and that’s just the latest one that we have.
‘As we become more interested in space and aliens, then they’ve sort of been attached to this theory as well.’
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The Great Pyramid was supposedly completed in 24 years.
But it was built from 2.3million limestone blocks, with each one weighing between 2.5tons 70 tons.
British writer Graham Hancock noted: ‘Assuming the masons worked ten hours a day, 365 days a year, they would have needed to place one block every two minutes.’
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The latest discovery that cavernous spaces exist beneath the pyramids was made by researchers from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and the Italian University of Pisa.
‘When we magnify the images we will reveal that beneath it lies what can only be described as a true underground city… an entire hidden world of many structures,’ said Corrado Malanga, one of the archaeological researchers.
It remains a mystery how much older than the pyramids the structures are.
It is also unknown was their purpose is, but they are connected by geometric passages.
Even more spectacular are eight vertical columns that descend 2,1245feet into a pair of huge chambers.
The depth is is almost five times the height of the Khafre Pyramid.
The cylinders are aligned in two rows of four that run north to south.
Given that the edges of the Great Pyramids face exactly north, south, east and west, the arrangements of the cylinders is certain to be significant.
And around each pillar is a staircase-like walkway.
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5.And that Daily Mail report from March 30 brings us to the following Daily Mail report from 8 days earlier. A report that includes some rather important details regarding the veracity of these findings. Details left out of the March 30 report entirely: the study hasn’t been peer reviewed and experts have already debunked it:
“The bombshell theory – which many experts claim to have already debunked – comes from a study that used radar pulses to create high-resolution images deep into the ground beneath the structures, the same way sonar radar is used to map the depths of the ocean.”
A bombshell theory…that happens to have already been debunked by experts. It’s a rather important detail in this story. A detail the Daily Mail decided to include in this March 22 version of that story but left out of the above March 30 version entirely. No mention at all of all the problems with this ‘groundbreaking research’. That’s part of the context of this story of the amazing discovery beneath the pyramids. The Daily Mail went from promoting this story – while at least including some expert caveats – to just promoting it without the caveats. So when we see how Joe Rogan has been promoting the idea that the pyramids are some sort of ancient hydrogen-generating power plant or other ‘experts’ suggest it’s all evidence of a “pre-flood era civilisation that was flourishing in a way that we can scarcely comprehend”, keep in mind how the public at large is being ‘informed’ about these ‘alternative histories’ from a variety of difference sources. Between online news like the Daily Mail or podcasters like Joe Rogan, the mainstreaming of the ‘ancient aliens’ meme has gone well being the History Channel. Learning that one of the two researchers, Corrado Malanga, is a UFOlogist and has appeared on YouTube shows about aliens is kind of what we should expect at this point:
…
American podcaster Joe Rogan has now weighed in on the ‘mind-blowing’ development, calling it ‘very very very weird’.
Rogan said: ‘This is insane. It’s quite stunning. They don’t understand what it is but it’s a uniform structure. There are several pillars and all of this is very very very weird.
‘It’s really crazy.’
He added: ‘Christopher Dunne believes that the Pyramid of Giza is a big power plant.
‘He has a theory about why its built the way its built.
‘He thinks it coincides with the ability to produce hydrogen, to utilise the rays of space and to generate electricity through this.’
Researcher Jay Anderson added: ‘What has just been announced in relation to the pyramids at the Giza plateau and the plateau itself is so incredible, so awe-inspiring and narrative shattering that I’ve been sitting here for the last hour trying to wrap my heard around the implications of what we were just told.
‘It’s nothing short of mindblowing. What’s been discovered is that there are huge structures coming down from the base of the pyramid deep into the bedrock.
‘It then connects to massive internal structures deep deep down.
‘The pyramid itself was already a massive red flag in the ancient Egyptian historical narrative but now, with this discovery, I think it’s impossible to say that the Egyptians we’ve been taught about built these structures.
‘It provides the most extraordinary evidence for a pre-flood era civilisation that was flourishing in a way that we can scarcely comprehend.’
…
Malanga is a UFOlogist and has appeared on YouTube shows about aliens, where he has discussed his more than decade-long career of studying UFO sightings in Italy.
Biondi, on the other hand specializes radar technology.
Malanga and Biondi’s published a separate peer-reviewed paper in October 2022 in the scientific journal Remote Sensing which found hidden rooms and ramps inside Khafre, along with evidence of a thermal anomaly near the pyramid’s base.
The new study used similar technology, but got a boost from a satellite orbiting Earth.
The new radar technique works by combining satellite radar data with tiny vibrations from naturally-occurring seismic movements, to construct 3D images of what lies beneath the surface of the earth, without doing any physical digging.
…
Sadly, instead, it appears that the researchers behind this bombshell report are engaging in a “huge exaggeration” at best, making claims that simply aren’t possible given the technology. And then there’s the proprietary data analysis software that doesn’t lend itself to peer review. How convenient:
…
The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed by independent experts, found eight vertical cylinder-shaped structures extending more than 2,100 feet below the pyramid and more unknown structures 4,000 feet deeper.
A press release described the findings as ‘groundbreaking’ and if true could rewrite the history of ancient Egypt.
However, independent experts have raised serious concerns about the study.
Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology, told DailyMail.com that it is not possible for the technology to penetrate that deeply into the ground, making the idea of an underground city ‘a huge exaggeration.’
Professor Conyers said it is conceivable there are small structures, such as shafts and chambers, beneath the pyramids that existed before they were built because the site was ‘special to ancient people.’
He highlighted how ‘the Mayans and other people in ancient Mesoamerica often built pyramids on top of the entrances of caves or caverns that had ceremonial meaning to them.’
The work by Corrado Malanga, from Italy’s University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde in Scotland has only been released during an in-person briefing in Italy this week and is yet to be published in a scientific journal, where it would need to be analyzed by independent experts.
Despite the scepticism, Professor Conyers added that the only way to prove the discoveries to be true would be ‘targeted excavations.’
…
He also told DailyMail.com that he could not tell if the technology used actually picked up hidden structure below the pyramid.
‘They are using all kinds of fancy proprietary data analysis software,’ said Professor Conyers.
…
Finally, note the member of congress who decided to share their interest in the alleged findings: Anna Paulina Luna, the same member of congress who has taken the lead in the disclosure of state secrets surrounding events like the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and UFOs. Again, how convenient:
…
The news has gone viral this week, with X flooded with posts about the potential discovery.
Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna shared a post about the structures on her X page.
…
It’s kind of amazing that we aren’t getting more reports of members of Congress touting this story. Unfounded claims of ancient aliens and lost civilizations are weirdly on brand for the second Trump administration. How long before we get a congressional hearing on the horrors of Critical Race Theory wiping away the proud history of the Aryan Mound Builders? It’s just a matter of time at this point. It’s the actual credible evidence for the Aryan Mound Builders that we’ll have to keep waiting for.
“The bombshell theory – which many experts claim to have already debunked – comes from a study that used radar pulses to create high-resolution images deep into the ground beneath the structures, the same way sonar radar is used to map the depths of the ocean.”
The ‘groundbreaking’ discovery beneath the Egyptian pyramids has taken the world by storm and new theories have emerged to cast doubt on how the structures were built.
Researchers from Italy and Scotland claim to have uncovered ‘a vast underground city’ which stretches more than 6,500 feet directly underneath the Pyramids of Giza, making them 10 times larger than the pyramids themselves.
The bombshell theory – which many experts claim to have already debunked – comes from a study that used radar pulses to create high-resolution images deep into the ground beneath the structures, the same way sonar radar is used to map the depths of the ocean.
American podcaster Joe Rogan has now weighed in on the ‘mind-blowing’ development, calling it ‘very very very weird’.
Rogan said: ‘This is insane. It’s quite stunning. They don’t understand what it is but it’s a uniform structure. There are several pillars and all of this is very very very weird.
‘It’s really crazy.’
He added: ‘Christopher Dunne believes that the Pyramid of Giza is a big power plant.
‘He has a theory about why its built the way its built.
‘He thinks it coincides with the ability to produce hydrogen, to utilise the rays of space and to generate electricity through this.’
Researcher Jay Anderson added: ‘What has just been announced in relation to the pyramids at the Giza plateau and the plateau itself is so incredible, so awe-inspiring and narrative shattering that I’ve been sitting here for the last hour trying to wrap my heard around the implications of what we were just told.
‘It’s nothing short of mindblowing. What’s been discovered is that there are huge structures coming down from the base of the pyramid deep into the bedrock.
‘It then connects to massive internal structures deep deep down.
‘The pyramid itself was already a massive red flag in the ancient Egyptian historical narrative but now, with this discovery, I think it’s impossible to say that the Egyptians we’ve been taught about built these structures.
‘It provides the most extraordinary evidence for a pre-flood era civilisation that was flourishing in a way that we can scarcely comprehend.’
The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed by independent experts, found eight vertical cylinder-shaped structures extending more than 2,100 feet below the pyramid and more unknown structures 4,000 feet deeper.
A press release described the findings as ‘groundbreaking’ and if true could rewrite the history of ancient Egypt.
However, independent experts have raised serious concerns about the study.
Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology, told DailyMail.com that it is not possible for the technology to penetrate that deeply into the ground, making the idea of an underground city ‘a huge exaggeration.’
Professor Conyers said it is conceivable there are small structures, such as shafts and chambers, beneath the pyramids that existed before they were built because the site was ‘special to ancient people.’
He highlighted how ‘the Mayans and other people in ancient Mesoamerica often built pyramids on top of the entrances of caves or caverns that had ceremonial meaning to them.’
The work by Corrado Malanga, from Italy’s University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde in Scotland has only been released during an in-person briefing in Italy this week and is yet to be published in a scientific journal, where it would need to be analyzed by independent experts.
Despite the scepticism, Professor Conyers added that the only way to prove the discoveries to be true would be ‘targeted excavations.’
‘My take is that as long as authors are not making things up and that their basic methods are correct, their interpretations should be given a look by all who care about the site,’ he explained.
‘We can quibble about interpretations, and that is called science. But the basic methods need to be solid.’
He also told DailyMail.com that he could not tell if the technology used actually picked up hidden structure below the pyramid.
‘They are using all kinds of fancy proprietary data analysis software,’ said Professor Conyers.
…
Malanga is a UFOlogist and has appeared on YouTube shows about aliens, where he has discussed his more than decade-long career of studying UFO sightings in Italy.
Biondi, on the other hand specializes radar technology.
Malanga and Biondi’s published a separate peer-reviewed paper in October 2022 in the scientific journal Remote Sensing which found hidden rooms and ramps inside Khafre, along with evidence of a thermal anomaly near the pyramid’s base.
The new study used similar technology, but got a boost from a satellite orbiting Earth.
The new radar technique works by combining satellite radar data with tiny vibrations from naturally-occurring seismic movements, to construct 3D images of what lies beneath the surface of the earth, without doing any physical digging.
Nicole Ciccolo, the project’s spokesperson, said: ‘A vast underground city has been discovered beneath the pyramids,’
‘[The] groundbreaking study has redefined the boundaries of satellite data analysis and archaeological exploration.’
…
The cylinder-shaped structures, which Ciccolo referred to as ‘shafts,’ were arranged in two parallel rows and surrounded by descending spiral pathways.
Ciccolo said the cylinder structures were found underneath each of the three pyramids and appeared ‘to serve as access points to this underground system.’
The team explained the system as other chamber-like structures interconnecting under all three of the pyramids.
‘The existence of vast chambers beneath the earth’s surface, comparable in size to the pyramids themselves, which have a remarkably strong correlation between the legendary Halls of Amenti,’ Ciccolo said.
‘These new archaeological findings could redefine our understanding of the sacred topography of ancient Egypt, providing spatial coordinates for previously unknown and unexplored subterranean structures,’ she added.
The news has gone viral this week, with X flooded with posts about the potential discovery.
Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna shared a post about the structures on her X page.
…
———–
Uncle Sam and The Swastika
Good afternoon, Mr. Every, I’ve been following your work since then, and I find the topics you’ve covered interesting. I’ll get straight to the point. I’ve certainly heard or read the work of Polish journalist and researcher Igor Witkowski on UFOs and their relationship with the Third Reich, and on the so-called Die Glocke.
Have you considered writing or analyzing what this person has said in recent years? Without going into too much detail, what is your opinion of the work Joseph P. Farrell has done on the subject of the Nazis?
Sincerely, Chris.
@Chris–
My name is spelled “E‑M-O-R‑Y,” not “E‑V-E-R‑Y.”
Cordially,
Dave Emory
The intellectual degradation of the American public is hardly a new phenomena, going back to the popularization of television at the very least. But that doesn’t mean it can’t get much, much worse. Faster than many suspect possible. Which brings us to the following Talking Points Memo report about a new development in the intellectual degradation of the US populace that could prove to be particularly damaging should we experience some sort of ‘UFO event’ in coming years:
President Trump’s media company has a new streaming platform, Truth+, one of the various entities along with the Truth Social social media platform that has been developed by Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), an entity majority owned by Trump himself. The streaming entity was formed in 2024 with an investment by Republican mega-donor James E. Davison in a move that had many experts concerned about the undue influence such an arrangement creates for Davison. But as we’re going to see, the concerns about undue influence should go far beyond concerns over whether or not a Republican mega-donor has inappropriate access to the US president. Because it turns out Truth+ has become a source of some highly concerning influence over its audience. Specifically, the influence what appears to be a flood of ‘documentaries’ on Truth+ asserting ancient alien manipulations of humanity. Alien manipulations that include not just an alien hand behind major religions — with the Judeochristian God and Hindu Krisha possibly aliens themselves — but the alien creation of humanity itself. Yep, the aliens are our gods. Or at least that’s what these ‘documentaries’ suggest the evidence points towards.
But not necessarily nice gods. These ‘documentaries’ don’t exactly paint this alien influence on humanity as some sort of benign or positive influence. No, the aliens appear to have some sort of very sinister agenda, which includes a “blood lab” in New Mexico that operates as part of a secret US government agenda to both keep the reality of UFOs hidden while providing the aliens with blood they can consume. Other projects at these labs include “deliberate production of utterly abominable results such as ape-human embryos and other ungodly biological combinations.” The ‘documentary’ “Lizard People” portrays the aliens as some sort of reptilian race, in keeping with the ‘reptilian shape-shifters’ narrative that has long defined much of the “Illuminati” lore popularized by figures like David Icke. “Lizard People” was consistently on the “10 most watch” list for Truth+ during the week prior to the publication of the TPM piece.
The documentaries appear to be almost entirely the creation of one particular production company: Alchemy Werks LLC. In producer of these ‘documentaries’, Charles Thompsen, has produced over a dozen such films since 2022. “I don’t know how you could take ‘Lizard People’ seriously, honestly,” claimed Thompsen, who went on to compare them to “Dungeons and Dragons” and other fantasy entertainment. And, in fact, these films don’t exclusively show up on Truth+. They appear on multiple streaming platforms. But it only seems to be Truth+ that labels them as “documentaries” and not “sci-fi” or “fantasy”. Amusingly, Thompsen told TPM he would contact Truth+ about the “documentary” label they gave two of the most notorious films he produced, “Lizard People” and “Conspiracy Chronicles: Dark Underworld”. It appears the latter got shifted to a “sci-fi” category on Truth+ while the former is still a “documentary”.
The piece also contains an interesting historical detail that might relate to the obsession that animated Elon Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, along with Elon’s own interests in the alien origins of the pyramids. As we’ve seen, Haldeman was obsessed with discovering evidence of ancient civilizations (of non-black people ) in Africa, having been convinced that such a discovery would serve as a historical justification for the South African apartheid government. Well, according to researcher Logan Strain, the popularization of the ‘lizard people’ ancient civilization concept took off in the 1940s after a cult leader, Maurice Doreal, read a fictional story about lizard people by Robert E. Howard, the author of the Conan the Barbarian series. Doreal went on to author a pamphlet entitled The Mysteries of Gobi that described a civilization of ancient lizard people beneath the desert.
So has President Trump taken any steps to address the many problems associated with owning a streaming platform that mislabels lizard alien conspiracy movies as ‘documentaries’? LOL, of course not. Or at least he hasn’t taken any meaningful steps. Instead, the president placed his majority shares of TMTG in a revocable trust managed solely by Donald Trump Jr. In addition, TMTG’s CEO and chairman happens to be Devin Nunes who serves as the current chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory board. Yes, the chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory board is the guy overseeing the promotion of lizard people ‘documentaries’.
And that’s all why we should probably expect a growing public belief in ancient alien civilizations manipulating humanity. At least the members of the public gullible enough to sign up for the streaming platform owned by the President of the United States. This is where we are:
“These ideas are easy to dismiss as utterly and obviously ridiculous. However, they have a history of attracting troubled believers on the furthest conspiracy fringe. And, while these movies are available on other streaming platforms, in this case the sitting president’s nascent media empire is playing a role in the promotion of this extreme content. Trump’s streaming service also seems to have helped it to find an audience. On Monday and through much of last week, “Lizard People” was listed among the top 10 “most watched” programs on the streaming service.”
This isn’t just a story about a “Lizard People” movie being showcased on President Trump’s “Truth+” streaming platform. It’s about multiple such movies being labeled as ‘documentaries’ and ending up among the ‘most watched’ videos on the platform. ‘Documentaries’ arguing that lizard aliens have been shaping human civilization for thousands of years and continue to do so to this day, even using the power of time travel. These lizard aliens may have even created humanity themselves:
And as these ‘documentaries’ warn audiences, it’s not just that aliens have been secretly manipulating, even starting, humanity. The Judeochristian God and other religious leaders including the Hindu deity Krishna may have even been aliens themselves:
And while ‘Lizard people’ narrative has obvious anti-Semitic undertones along the lines of David Icke, note how it also lends itself to attacks on the Catholic Church. And presumably any other religion if the aliens have been secretly controlling humanity for millennia. Which is a reminder that any upcoming ‘UFO visitations’ could be used for both a ‘World Peace’ kind of new religious event but also some kind of horrific sectarian war:
But this narrative doesn’t just merge religions with UFO-ology. There’s even a kind of vampire UFO angle, with discussion of “blood labs” where blood is generated for the aliens’ consumption. It’s a particularly QAnon-friendly version of this narrative:
And then there’s this interesting historical tidbit about the origins and popularization of the ‘lizard people’ concept, while many of these concepts go back to Madam Blavatsky, it was in the 1940s when a cult leader, Maurice Doreal, read science fiction story about lizard people that inspired him to make the claim that an ancient race of lizard people created a lost civilization beneath the Gobi desert. It’s the kind of story that has obvious parallels with both the ‘lost African civilization’ narratives that so deeply influence Elon Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman and also Musk’s own suggestions that aliens built the pyramids. Which raises the grimly fascinating questions as to whether or not Musk’s grandfather was a fan of the lizard people stories. He certainly would have been the target audience:
And it’s not like President Trump just owns a small minority stake in the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). He’s the majority owner. And while that ownership was placed in a revocable trust, that trust is solely managed by Don Jr. And TMTG’s CEO and chairman is Devin Nunes, the current chair of Trump’s intelligence advisory board. And, oh look at that, it turns out the valuation for this company dwarfs its revenues. It’s like a Trump family/administration joint conflict of interest:
And then we get to the explanation from the company that actually produces all of these ‘documentaries’, Alchemy Werks LLC. According to Charles Thompsen — who has produced over a dozen such films since 2022 — it’s all merely intended to be fantasy entertainment and should have been marked as “sci-fi/fantasy”. It was only after TPM approached Thompsen that one of the films, “Conspiracy Chronicles: Dark Underworld”, was switched from “documentary” to “sci-fi” on TMTG. “Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space” is still identified as a “documentary”:
And as we’ve seen, it’s not like the mainstreaming of this kind of material is just taking place on a media platform own by the President of the United States. This kind of ‘ancient aliens’ narrative has been aggressively promoted on outlets like the History Channel for years. Beyond that, you can find these same videos on other platforms like Amazon Prime. But, again, none of those platforms are majority owned by the sitting president. A president with a political following that often takes on a religious fervor. What kind of long-term cultural impact is Truth+ creating here? Because odds are the audiences gullible enough to treat these movies as ‘documentaries’ probably aren’t going to suddenly ‘snap out of it’ when Trump leaves office:
And keep in mind that this phenomena of a streaming platform owned by the President pumping out far right alien conspiracy ‘documentaries’ has really just gotten started. Truth+ is less than a year old. The golden age of far right conspiracy narratives is only gaining momentum. Gullible revisionism is the theme of the day. The fact that the person ultimately behind this happens to be the most openly corrupt US President in history known for spinning his way out of any and all controversy through a string of lies on nonsense is, sadly, very much in keeping with that theme.
First, we got an update on the missing minute in the “raw footage” of the prison’s special housing unit (SHU) where Jeffrey Epstein was housed in on the night he ‘committed suicide’. It’s actually a missing 2 minutes and 53 seconds. Recall how the metadata in released “raw footage” revealed it was two clips spliced together, with the first clip going to 11:58:58 PM, two seconds before 11:59, and the second clip starting exactly at midnight. So now we know the first clip ran until about 12:01:51 AM and was clipped back to 11:58:58 PM.
And while we don’t know the exact reason for why the first clip was made in this manner, what this story does tell us unambiguously is that a file for that missing minute exists. Or at least existed. Now, if Attorney General Pam Bondi’s preposterous story about a security system that always drops the last minute of each day is true, then that missing minute would be like just blank footage. But that footage exists, blank or not. That’s part of the significance of this new Wired report on the ‘raw footage’ metadata. We can now very reasonably demand that missing minute, blank or not.
Of course, such demands for the missing minute will likely be ignored by the Trump administration that remains embroiled in the controversy that it doesn’t seem capable of quelling. But with a growing loss of faith among the MAGA base in the Trump administration’s credibility on the Epstein matter, the political costs of ignoring such demands could become pricey. Trump keeps looking more and more guilty with his claims of innocence and hoaxes and it’s getting harder to ignore.
The Wired report also includes the fact that the ‘raw footage’ wasn’t even footage of Epstein’s cell door. It’s footage of the door to the tier where Epstein was being held. So if someone who was already inside that tier helped Epstein ‘commit suicide’ we would have no idea. Recall that interview with Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein where he observed that investigators seemed to have completely ignored the possibility of another prisoner carrying out an attack on Epstein. Beyond that, as Michael Baden, the forensic pathologist hired by Mark Epstein to oversee the autopsy, observed in a report from March of 2023, the public has never been informed on the freedom of movement inside the SHU. In other words, we still don’t know if other SHU detainees would have been allowed to access Epstein’s cell on their own, which is an absurd oversight given that Epstein was previously on suicide watch over a purported suicide attempt where his then-cellmate, former police officer Nicholas Tartaglione, was initially suspected as possibly being involved. And then, in a move that stunned legal experts, he was removed from suicide watch days before his ‘suicide’. The more we learn, the worse it looks. For Trump, especially.
Which brings us to the latest credibility-shattering angle to this story: the 2003 birthday card from Trump to Epstein that was just reported on by the Wall Street Journal. An article that already has Trump suing the WSJ claiming libel. As we’re going to see, if that story is libel, it’s very plausible libel. The card features a typed out pretend conversation between Trump and Epstein which includes lines like “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” and ends with “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” The conversation is surrounding by a doodle of a woman drawn with a black pen and Donald Trump’s signature signed in a position to almost be the pubic hair in drawing.
Trump and his MAGA allies have already lashed out, crying hoax, and insisting that Trump never uses words like enigma and never draws doodles. Except, he has an established track record of using the word and even referred to then-GOP primary rival Ben Carson as an enigma twice in a 2015 speech. And he has a long record drawing doodles, including drawing one of the New York City skyline to be auctioned off in 2008.
So we have a new story, by the Murdoch-owned WSJ, no less, that only seemed to serve as evidence of those claims Epstein made about being Trump’s closet friend for a decade. And the MAGA denials have already been debunked. Trump’s nasty case of Epstein-itis is only getting worse. It’s hard to see how the loss of faith doesn’t deepen. Are we looking at the kind of crisis that ends with President JD Vance? Because President Trump’s credibility with his own base is increasingly looking in peril and it’s very unclear how he turns this around.
Ok, first, here’s the latest Wired update on that ‘raw footage’. The kind of update that raises more questions but also tells us that the ‘missing minute’ exists and could, in theory, be released, whether blank footage or not:
“WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department’s claim that it was “raw” footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.”
It wasn’t a missing minute. It was a missing 2 minutes and 53 seconds, cut off from the end of first clip. Importantly, that missing 2:53 starts right when the first clip was truncated for the claimed reason that the security system always created this 1 minute gap in video coverage a minute before midnight.
Keep in mind there are a variety of technical scenarios that could describe what we’re seeing. It’s possible the security system really does routinely have a 1 minute gap right before midnight where the security footage is all just blank but that blank minute is still being recorded, and then the regular footage picks up again at midnight. That would be an absurd system for a jail to set up, but at least technically plausible. In that case, we would be assuming that the person at the FBI who put together this “raw” footage simply create two separate clips from the footage, a first clip that went until 1:53 past midnight and a second clip that picks up at midnight. Under that scenario, we would assume that missing 2:53 was just a reflection of the FBI employee having to first manually create a clip that only goes up to that minute before midnight and needed to first generate a clip that went and little past that point only to trim it further for the precise alignment. It’s the scenario that leaves the FBI with the best explanation for the discrepancy. But then there’s scenarios where the ‘missing one minute gap’ is complete nonsense and just part of a cover up and there isn’t really a gap at all.
But what this missing 2:53 unambiguously indicates is that the file for the recorded footage doesn’t end at 11:59 PM and then pick up again at midnight. There’s continual coverage, even during that alleged one-minute blackout. So, in theory, it should be possible for the FBI to release the actual “raw footage” of the time surrounding midnight to answer these questions. Will that complete raw footage in the minutes around that midnight hour ever be released? If not, that is wildly suspicious. This should be an easy controversy to dismiss:
Also not how the first clip with the missing 2:53 was saved multiple times over the course of 3 1/2 hours. This was hardly a complex editing operation. It should take 3 1/2 hours to do this kind of simple video cropping unless the person doing it is a beginner who is learning how to use the software. It’s possible they created the file, and then worked on something else and only intermittently returned to the file to continue working on it. But there’s another explanation for the hours spent generating this file: they had to show it to someone to review it and that person asked them to make changes. We’ll presumably never know the explanation, although “MJCOLE~1” at the FBI presumably knows the answer:
And then we get this rather important detail about what was even revealed in those security files: the video only shows the doors leading up to wing where Epstein’s was being held. It doesn’t show the door to Epstein’s cell itself. So while the questions over this released ‘raw footage’ are certainly relevant in this story, it’s important to keep in mind that this footage doesn’t actually answer the question of whether or not anyone entered Epstein’s cell. It only purportedly answers the question of whether or not someone entered the tier of the SHU where Epstein’s was being held:
And those growing questions over the veracity of that ‘raw footage’ brings us to the latest Trump-Epstein revelation: the Wall Street Journal just reported on a 2003 birthday card from Trump to Epstein. It’s creepy. An enigmatic kind of creepiness, one might say:
““Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter reads.”
Well that’s just about the creepiest way he could have ended his birthday card. But perhaps appropriate given Epstein’s claims that he was Trump’s closest friend for a decade. And as we can see, Trump and his many defenders — including those seemingly also angry with Trump over the handling of the Epstein case and even Elon Musk who publicly suggested Trump was in the Epstein client list — were quick to insist that this alleged birthday card was completely out of character for Trump:
And yet, despite those cries of ‘fake news!’, we’re already being flooded with examples of Trump’s extensive doodle history:
““Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” Trump wrote.”
Again, it’s hard to think of a creepier line he could have used. But that’s the kind of friendship they had. A very creepy close friendship. But it’s also hard to imagine a weaker defense than what we’ve seen from Trump and the restof his MAGA world allies. There is no mysteroy about Trump’s use of the word enigma. He has an established track record of using it. Just as he has an established track record of creating doodles, including a doodle sold for charity. The evidence to refute these claims was just sitting out there an took less than a day for people to discover:
Again, are we looking at the start of the President JD Vance administration? Time will tell. But this really does just keep looking worse. And it’s hard to imagine Trump’s lawsuit is going to make it look any better. If anything it’s going to deepen the crisis.
How much deeper can the crisis go before we start getting reports of a some kind of health reason for Trump to step down? Again, time will tell. *tick tock*.
The US House of Representatives just went on recess for the summer. It wasn’t a scheduled recess. Instead, it appears to be an attempt by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to quell growing public calls for the release of the ‘Epstein files’ as outrage over the Trump administration’s handling of this matter continues to fester. Yep, the House just shut itself down to dodge all these Epstein-related questions. It wasn’t exactly subtle.
At the same time, as we’re going to see, Elon Musk has renewed his online crusade to implicate President Trump in the Epstein file, furthering the apparent demise of the Trump/Musk bro-mance that has exploded over the past couple of months. Which makes this a good time to recall that New York Times piece from August 12, 2019, days after Epstein’s death, “The Day Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People”, by James B. Stewart about his 2018 visit to Epstein’s Manhattan mansion for an interview. It was apparently intended to be an ‘off the record’ interview, where nothing would be sourced directly back to Epstein. But with Epstein’s death, Stewart decided that ‘off the record’ pledge no longer applied. As we saw, Stewart reportedly described to Epstein how he heard a rumor that Epstein was advising Elon Musk in the wake of the corporate turmoil created by Musk after he announced on Twitter that he had lined up the funding to take Tesla private, resulting in an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (which resulted in a settlement of a $20 million and the agreement that a lawyer would approve of some of Musk’s tweets in advance). Stewart told Epstein how he heard that it was Epstein who was compiling a list of candidates to replace Musk as the new chairman of Tesla. And he was doing this at Musk’s behest.
Yes, when Musk needed to find someone to take his place, he went to Epstein. Allegedly. At least that’s what James B. Stewart heard and Epstein seemed to confirm back in 2018. Now, on the one hand, it’s true that Epstein had shockingly extensive ties to the technology sector and would have known a lot of people who might be considered possible candidates. But at the same time, Epstein was also a master of blackmail and extortion, and would presumably be knowledgable of compromising information about these tech figures too. So we have to ask: why did Musk allegedly want Epstein’s expertise? Because it’s not like Musk didn’t know people in Silicon Valley. He should have had little difficulty generating that list on his own. Why would someone as well connected as Musk go to Epstein? Well, there’s glaringly obvious possibility: Was Musk specifically looking to learn who has compromising material on them and who doesn’t? Because that would certainly explain Musk’s willingness to secretly employ Epstein in 2018 for such a sensitive, at a time when Epstein was, in his own words, “radioactive”.
And as we saw, while Musk vehemently denied the report, Epstein told Stewart that he had to avoid discussing his work for Telsa because, should that become public, he would have to stop that work since he was “radioactive”. Again, this was intended to be an “off the record” interview, so the fact that Epstein shared this with Stewart isn’t particularly shocking since it presumably never would have been published had he not died. It’s an example of how ‘off the record’ interviews could serve as a kind of “dead man’s trigger” for Epstein. Because his death certainly resulted in an embarrassing revelation for Elon. Or at least it would have been embarrassing had the world not forgotten about it.
Let’s also keep in mind one of the other glaringly obvious implications of the story of Musk’s alleged secret hiring of Epstein in 2018 to identify a list of ‘compromised’ possible replacements: the hiring Epstein in secret is, itself, a compromising act that could lead to blackmail and extortion. Musk really was kind of beholden to Epstein once he did that, assuming the claims are true. If Musk actually hired Epstein to find out who was compromised and who wasn’t, that would be all the more scandalous and extortable. And the fact that Stewart approached Epstein with the gossip he was hearing about Musk hiring him suggests that word was getting around. It’s a possible scenario that doubles as an example of how Epstein’s alleged work as a sexual blackmailer and extortionist wouldn’t necessarily just be of interest to intelligence agencies. All sorts of private interests might want to hire Epstein’s services too. For all of the focus on which Democrat or Republican elected officials might be on Epstein’s client list, it’s easy to forget that corporate executives and other powerful people in the private sector are both capable of creating highly expensive scandals based on their personal behavior but also the kind of people others might want to control.
It’s also a reminder that the ‘Epstein client list’ wouldn’t necessarily include the clients who procured sexual services. There’s also the clients interested in learning about that dirt. Clients like Elon Musk. At least that’s what Epstein seem to admit to James B. Stewart backer in 2018 in an ‘off the record’ interview.
Also recall how that interview with Epstein by James B. Stewart suggested that the kind of dirt Epstein was collecting on powerful people wasn’t limited to sexual blackmail. As Epstein put it to Stewart, the sordid nature of his very notoriety seemed to make powerful people more inclined to share their own secrets with him. And use drugs in front of him. In fact, Epstein told Stewart he saw prominent tech figures taking drugs and arranging for sex. Epstein wasn’t just generating potential blackmail material by providing underage sex services to powerful men. He was creating a kind of demented elite club house environment where they could feel free to do all sorts of drugs and spill their secrets too. Like Bill Gates, who reportedly visited Epstein’s home dozens of times from 2011–2014 while seeking advice from Epstein over how to end his ‘toxic’ marriage and guiding Gates’s philanthropic spending. There’s a good chance some compromising information was shared with Epstein whether or not Gates procured any sexual services.
That’s all part of the largely forgotten ‘Musk hired Epstein’ story. It points towards an angle to the Epstein saga that hasn’t really received all that much attention. We’ve heard much about Epstein socializing, and presumably compromising prominent people in technology and academia and we’ve also heard about his likely ties to US and Israeli intelligence, and perhaps other intelligence agencies. But the sale of his blackmail material to private interests like Musk is an under-explored possibility. And that sale would in effect create a second ‘client list’. One with Musk’s name on it, allegedly.
And if Musk really did hire Epstein as a means of kind of vetting the blackmailable status of potential replacements, keep in mind that would also suggest there’s a shocking number of people who fall into that category. How many people did Epstein’s operation provide sexual services for who would fall into the category of possible Tesla CEO replacements?
At the same time, there is a story that we’ve heard about quite a bit that involves an entity collecting databases of compromising information on individuals with clients that include both government agencies and private interests: Palantir. And now, with the Musk-launched Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) assembling a giant centralized ‘database of ruin’ of highly sensitive information on virtually all US residents, and tasking Palantir to build and maintain it, Palantir really has become a kind of central government repository for possible blackmail material on everyone. That’s also part of the context of the current Epstein-related uproar: for all of the understandable political turmoil generated by this story about an intelligence-connected master of blackmail and extortion dying under mysterious circumstances, the reality is that a system of control based on the compilation of sensitive materials on everyone is already being constructed thanks to Musk’s DOGE efforts and Peter Thiel’s Palantir.
And that’s also part of the context of Musk’s ongoing public mockery of President Trump’s Epstein embarrassments. When Musk asks “where is the client list?”, he’s presumably not talking about the list of people who secretly hired Epstein for CEO recruitment advise. But it’s a great question: who else hired Epstein to help vet potential corporate leaders? And, more generally, how pervasive is blackmail and extortion among the powerful? Because the more we learn about the life, and death (and coverup), of Jeffrey Epstein, the more it seems like this is just how the halls of power operates. It’s been said that, behind every great fortune lies a great crime. How about blackmail and extortion?
And those questions about the pervasiveness of blackmail and extortion among the billionaire class brings us to another rather interesting recent story: Musk’s xAI firm just inked a deal with the Pentagon worth nearly $200 million to implement the Grok AI for military uses. It’s the latest in string of major AI contracts announced by the Pentagon in recent months. And coming at the same time executives from Silicon Valley firms are being directly appointed reserve officers in the US military as part of the new “201 Directive”, where they will be overseeing the implementation of AI into the Pentagon’s infrastructure. Yep, Meta, OpenAI, and Palantir have already been sworn in.
Part of what made the xAI contract notable news is the fact that it came just days after a recently updated Grok AI went on an antisemitism bender on Twitter, culminating in Grok declarating itself to be “MechaHitler”. But this story is also hitting at the same time the Trump/Musk bro-mance has continued to publicly collapse. How is it that xAI managed to secure this contract in this political context? Recall how Anthropic’s special version of its “Claude” AI built for government work was going to have fewer guardrails compared to the civilian Claude counterpart. That was selling point for the government, apparently. Fewer guardrails. Will “Grok for Government” operate with fewer restraints too? It would be foolish to assume otherwise. Which also make this a good time to recall how the “white genocide” Grok fiasco was eventually blamed — by Grok — on someone making an “unauthorized modification” to Grok’s code to force to be a Nazi. Imagine what someone with a “fewer guardrails” AI will be able to do if they have malevolent intent.
And, as we’re going to see, it was just days after that Pentagon contract was signed that Musk was back to publicly demanding a release of the Epstein files after suggesting Trump is on the ‘client list’. It’s a pretty incredible state of affairs. And with the Epstein story playing out the way it is, we have to ask: is Musk getting these government contracts primarily based on the merits of the services he’s offering? Or is some kind of corruption/extortion playing a role in the securing of these contracts? How pervasive is the kind of blackmail and extortion seemingly revealed by the Epstein story today in the realm of government contracting? There’s no reason to assume Epstein is the only source of potential blackmail material. Especially now with the DOGE/Palantir ‘database of ruin’. A whole new universe of leverage is now accessible to the people who have access to that database. And not just government contracts. Recall that story about how Palantir is now being incorporated into the British Navy, with an eye on using Palantir’s AI to predict future staffing needs and help identify personnel who should be prioritized for retainment to fulfill those future staffing needs. As we saw, the figure running Palantir’s London office was none other than the grandson of Oswald Mosely, the founder of Britain’s fascist party. Just imagine how much intimate information Palantir is going to be acquiring on the individual members of the UK’s Navy. How might that data base abused and exploited?
And while Palantir may be playing a leading role in the construction of this ‘database of ruin’, we shouldn’t assume it’s only Palantir that has been consuming all of this sensitive data. As we’re going to see, privacy experts have been sounding the alarm about the mass incorporation of these same highly sensitive government databases into Grok, with an apparent aim on getting Grok integrated into as much of the federal infrastructure as possible. ‘Grok for government’ is intended to be the future of government work once DOGE is done. And it’s clearly intended to be a permanent fixture. Pervasive. All knowing and all seeing, across the federal landscape. At least that’s the plan.
At the same time, let’s not assume Palantir isn’t aggressively making inroads in its own push to gain access to as much sensitive information as possible. As we’re going see, Palantir has a new project already underway in the UK that give us a glimpse into what can be done with a ‘database or ruin’: Project Nectar, a new AI-powered system that sure sounds like a ‘database or ruin’ for the UK populace. The new system, soon to be tested in the UK town of Bedfordshire, is designed to give the police shockingly detailed profiles of the residents of the town for use in solving crimes. The database will include details like political affiliations, religion, health, and sexual habits. If successful, the project will be rolled out across the UK. With ‘success’ being defined by how well this system helps solve/prevent crimes. So Palantir could be put in a position to manage and build personal profiles on the population of the UK to be used by law enforcement. What kind of leverage does this confers onto Palantir over the UK populace?
Keep in mind that there’s going to be nothing stopping a future Democratic-run administration from expelling Grok or Palantir from the government’s most sensitive databases. Well, nothing except all of the possible leverage Musk has acquired thanks to his access to the most sensitive contents in the ‘database of ruin’. Then again, it’s not as if Democratic administrations in the past have done anything to reign in the pernicious rise of Palantir, funded by the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, over the past quarter century. So who knows if we’ll see future Democratic administrations — assuming they are allowed to exist — take steps to correct the increasingly dangerous private AI intrusion into the federal government. But if that should happen, let’s not kid ourselves. Musk and Thiel will have plenty of ammunition to fight back. The kind of ammunition we’ll never hear about because not hearing about it is the entire point. That’s how blackmail works.
Also keep in mind that the more both Musk and Thiel turns themselves into a politically radioactive public personas who alienates large swathes of the population, the more reliant they are going to be on governments as clients. Which, in turn, is going to make the cultivation and threat of powerful leverage all the more important. By throwing their lot in with MAGA-land so completely, Musk and Thiel might have to become kind of super-Epsteins to protect those government contracts. Individuals capable of threatening anyone from any party who decides to come after those government contracts.
It’s that ongoing construction of massive, unprecedented databases of highly sensitive information on everyone, managed by fascist entities like Palantir or xAI, that is something we should increasingly keep in mind as this Epstein story continues to play out. Because for all of the uproar about the kind of information Epstein was gathering on powerful people, we shouldn’t assume that the powerful are the only members of society worth blackmailing. Once you have a system in place to created leverage over just about anyone, that’s a system that will be used. US and UK Stasi states really are under construction, led by figures like Thiel and Musk.
Ok, first, here’s a look at the truly incredible public feud still ongoing between President Trump and Elon Musk over the Epstein files. A feud that seems to mostly involve Musk issuing scathing public attacks suggesting that Trump is in the Epstein files and covering it up. And yet, amazingly, a feud that doesn’t seem to have impacted Musk’s ability to procure lucrative government contracts at all:
““Wow, amazing that Epstein ‘killed himself’ and Ghislaine [Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend convicted of sex trafficking] is in federal prison for a hoax,” he wrote. In more than a dozen posts in an hour to his 222 million X followers, he noted that “not even one” of Epstein’s alleged clients had been prosecuted and said “so many powerful people want that list suppressed”.”
Elon Musk sure is being remarkably aggressive with his Epstein accusations lately. Sure, some of that might be due to his apparent falling out with Trump. He’s even tasking Grok compile information on the list of known passengers on the Lolita Express. But how much of this behavior can we attribute to that largely overlooked 2019 piece by James B Stewart alleging Musk literally secretly hired Epstein to find his own replacement? Either way, it’s pretty amazing that Musk is continuing to level these high profile attacks at the same time his firms are continuing to secure lucrative federal contracts. Like the new $200 million xAI contract with the Pentagon. Although it wasn’t exclusively xAI that received a Pentagon contract. Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI got similar contracts. And as the article notes, the Pentagon isn’t just planning on incorporating these AIs into its own operations. It’s also teaming up with the General Services Administration to make them available throughout the federal government. But in xAI’s case, the announcement happened to come a week after Grok publicly declared itself MechaHitler:
“xAI’s contract announcement comes after the company was forced to issue a public apology after Grok posted a string of responses on X last week that included promoting Nazi ideology and rape fantasies. The company claimed that it fixed the issue and subsequently unveiled its latest AI model with a $300-a-month subscription for an advanced version of the tool.”
A new $200 million Pentagon AI contract, just a week after Grok went full Nazi. A whole new “MechaHitler” episode that followed weeks after the prior episodes when Grok developed a ‘white genocide’ fixation that it blamed on an unauthorized modification of its code. Musk sure has proven adept at acquiring more and more government contracts, even after his big public spat with President Trump, a notoriously vindictive individual. And it’s not like xAI is the only US company offering these kinds of AI services. The competition is intense. And yet xAI still managed to secure this big new contract. It’s all rather amazing:
And as the article reminds us, xAI’s contract with the Pentagon is just start when it comes to Musk’s ambitions for AI government services. During his time running DOGE, Musk was pushing to embed Grok across the federal bureaucracy:
And then there’s the fact that the Pentagon is reportedly partnering with the General Services Administration to make these tools available throughout the federal government. Big plans for a kind of full-spectrum federal AI takeover are already underway. And it’s not just xAI. The Pentagon is inking similar contracts with other AI firms like Google, Anthropic and OpenAI too. Which is also rather amazing. There’s going to be a variety of competing AIs all scouring the federal government’s databases...doing whatever they want with that data after they’ve taken it:
Next, let’s take a look at that Reuters report from back in May about the extensive pilfering of highly sensitive government databases underway as part of the Musk-led DOGE efforts. But the alarms raised by the whistleblowers cited in the report aren’t just about the contents of these highly sensitive federal databases being fed into AI platforms like Grok. They were also raising alarms over the extent to which DOGE was being used as a kind of trojan horse to get Grok embedded as deeply into the federal bureaucracy as possible, with DOGE staffers reportedly directing federal employees to use Grok for all sorts of applications despite not getting prior approval. And those applications include setting up systems to scan employee emails to search for signs of ‘disloyalty’ towards President Trump’s agenda. So we are already getting reports of Grok being surreptitiously deployed across the federal government and even being used for carrying out political loyalty tests.
And as the report also notes, among the many concerns raised by all of the unprecedented access granted to Musk as a result of his lead DOGE role is the concern that Musk’s companies have now gained access to nonpublic federal contracting records that could prove to be extremely useful for Musk’s companies when it comes to procuring more government contracts. Was any of that nonpublic data used to help Musk’s xAI secure that $200 million Pentagon contract? We’ll presumably never know, but something allowed Musk’s xAI to secure that Pentagon contract despite the fact that Trump and Musk have been publicly at war with each other for weeks now. The bro-mance died, and yet Musk’s influence doesn’t seem to be waning. Why is that? Could the incredible DOGE data theft — and all of the leverage that comes with it — be part of the answer?:
“As part of Musk’s stated push to eliminate government waste and inefficiency, the billionaire and his DOGE team have accessed heavily safeguarded federal databases that store personal information on millions of Americans. Experts said that data is typically off limits to all but a handful of officials because of the risk that it could be sold, lost, leaked, violate the privacy of Americans or expose the country to security threats.”
A massive ingestion of some of the federal government’s most sensitive databases on millions of Americans directly into Grok. That’s the scenario described by the anonymous sources behind this report from back in May. But it’s not just this mass ingestion of sensitive data. It’s the fact that DOGE has apparently been telling federal employees to use Grok even though it’s never been approved for that kind of work. This is like a hostile takeover of the federal bureaucracy. Or as one privacy expert put it, “Given the scale of data that DOGE has amassed and given the numerous concerns of porting that data into software like Grok, this to me is about as serious a privacy threat as you get”:
And then there’s the implicit unfair competitive advantage xAI gained over its AI rivals. An advantage gained both by pushing Grok on federal employees but also gained from getting access to valuable nonpublic federal contracting data. Which raises the question: what kind of role did access to that contracting data play in xAI’s successful bid for that $200 million Pentagon contract?
And note how DHS found itself forced to shut off access to all commercial AI tools back in May after workers were suspected of improperly using them with sensitive data. And yet, Reuters wasn’t able to confirm whether or not this order included Grok. So it sounds like it’s possible federal workers have been cut off from using everything but Grok over the past couple of months:
And then we get to the Orwellian update on how DOGE was using DHS employee emails: the emails were being fed into AI to identity communications suggesting an employee is not “loyal” to President Trump’s political agenda, a violation of civil service law. And look who the DoD trotted out to defend the department against charges that DOGE was conducting AI-driven loyalty tests: Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson assured Reuters that the DoD’s DOGE team had not been involved in any network monitoring nor had DOGE been “directed” to use any AI tools, including Grok. Keep in mind that we were told that DOGE staffers attempted to gain access to DHS employee emails, NOT DoD employee emails. So Wilson was sort of engaged a non-denial denial when they assured us that no DoD DOGE members were involved with the monitoring of employee activity. But also keep in mind how Kingsley Wilson happens to be the DoD spokesperson who was previously criticised by Jewish civil rights groups for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media, including references to the “great replacement theory” and the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. She was also promoted to the role of Pentagon Press Secretary days after this Reuters report:
And those plans to use Grok to surveil federal employees for their political loyalty brings us to following by Thomas Neuburger about what could be considered a next-generation digital Epstein-like blackmail operation. A population-wide blackmail operation that could be seen as an application of the ‘database of ruin’: Databases built for use by police that track not just things like medical conditions but also religious and political beliefs as well as sex life details. All set to be managed on behalf of the government by private entities like Palantir. It’s not a hypothetical future possibility. The UK has already hired Palantir to build exactly that kind of system to be deployed and used against the populace. It’s called “Project Nectar”:
“Which brings us back to Epstein and his widely assumed blackmail operation. (Carlson again: “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t think that.”) What else do you think a massive database of “political views, sex life, race and health data” could be used for domestically — except to silence dissent and blackmail compliance?”
Yeah, what else are we to call Project Nectar? Because that sure sounds like a database designed to minimize dissent. An AI-super-Epstein for the UK, although hopefully with less child abuse. But the blackmail potential will still be there. All managed by Palantir. Again, don’t forget that Palantir’s London offices are headed by the grandson of Oswald Mosely. What are the odds this system doesn’t get abused? It’s the kind of story that doesn’t bode well for the UK populace, especially those in the UK who have a history of vocal opposition to Palantir. But it does bode extremely Palantir’s future government contracts. Nothing gives you a competitive edge quite like having leverage on everyone.
And yet, Palantir isn’t alone in the ‘database or ruin’ game. It has plenty of fascist competition as Musk’s xAI makes clear. Or perhaps fascist help. It’s not yet clear how having multiple entities with ‘database or ruin’ privileges will play out as control is consolidated. We just know the public is going to lose big time. As per usual.
It’s not going away. Festering appears to be the only available option for a Trump administration embroiled in an Epstein story that refuses to leave the public stage. Festering and evolving as more information becomes available. Which brings us to the very interesting story about 15 to 16 hours of interviews of Jeffrey Epstein in Steve Bannon possession. Interviews Bannon himself conducted back in 2018 and that growing number of people are now demanding Bannon release to the public.
One of those individuals loudly demanding a release of the Epstein interviews is Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein. As we’ve seen, Mark has long been critical of the official investigation and conclusions into his brother’s death, recently calling the DOJ’s ‘it was suicide’ conclusion “laughably stupid”. But part of what makes this new story about the Bannon interview tapes so intriguing is that Mark claims Bannon initially conducted the interviews as part of a reputation washing project on behalf of Epstein. Yep, Bannon was out to help Epstein rehabilitate his public reputation. That was the project underway in 2018. Of course, it was in late November of 2018 when the Miami Herald started its blockbuster reporting that soon led to Epstein’s arrest and jailing. So if Mark Epstein’s claims are true, it would appear Bannon was engaged in an Epstein-reputation-washing endeavor until such an endeavor became impossible. Today, Bannon assures the public that he will be releasing a documentary based on the interviews some time next year.
But part of what makes the reputation-washing allegation around Bannon and Epstein so intriguing is this is not the first time we’ve seen stories along these lines. First, recall that very intriguing 2019 NY Times piece by journalist James B. Stewart about interviewing Epstein in August of 2018. The title of the piece was “The Day Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People”. And not only did Epstein seem to confirm that he had been secretly hired by Elon Musk to consulting in finding a potential Musk replacement at the head of Tesla, but Stewart claimed that he was later invited to have dinner with Epstein. He declined the invitation, but was told there would have been two other companions at that dinner: journalist Michael Wolfe and Steve Bannon.
But that anecdote by James B. Stewart isn’t the only time we’ve heard about Bannon’s seemingly close relationship with Epstein. Recall how Bannon was convinced Epstein was an intelligence asset and even reportedly became interested in Epstein as a source for intelligence after he was kicked out of the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. Bannon was also a frequent visitor to Epstein’s Manhattan estate. Far right activist Charles Johnson even claimed he was invited by Bannon to meeting Epstein. While Johnson says he turned down the invitation, he also stated “What I was told about that meeting by people close to Bannon was that he was trying to replace Epstein as a source for information from various intelligence networks. He saw Epstein as a rival or a partner but he wanted what Epstein had.” And another billionaire Bannon was hanging out with at the time, Guo Wengui, allegedly used prostitutes and hidden cameras to compromise powerful figures as a means of clout and control according to lawsuit. Yes, for all of the turmoil President Trump has been experiencing over allegations like Epstein’s assertion that he was Trump’s closest friend for a decade, it appears Steve Bannon really had been one of Epstein’s closest associates over the past decade, in part out of a desire to replace Epstein as a master of elite blackmail. That’s all part of the context of Mark Epstein’s ‘reputation washing’ allegation.
And with the Trump administration reportedly now considering some sort of special sweetheart deal for Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for a testimony that presumably removes suspicions from Trump, this is also a good time to keep in mind the reputation washing exercise Maxwell was seemingly engaged in back in 2012. That would be the TerraMar Project, a charity ostensibly focused on raising public awareness of oceanic ecosystems. Recall how Dr. Nathan Wolfe, a founder of Metabiota, was one of the prominent scientists invited to help launch The TerraMar Project. It was widely seen as a kind of ‘reputation washing’ exercise for Maxwell following the public reporting on Epstein’s sex trafficking. And yet Google even debuted its Google Ocean project at the launch event. Google’s involvement was especially interesting to see in this mix because, in addition to Google being one of the early private funders of the Metabiota initiative, Sergey Brin and Larry Page were involved with the network of scientific luminaries figures around John Brockman and the Edge Foundation. Brockman happened to be Epstein’s main contact with the scientific academic community. And as we should perhaps expectWolfe was also an Edge Foundation member. Ghislaine Maxwell had some pretty notable help when it came to her own reputation washing in the wake of the initial Epstein sex-trafficking allegations.
Will Mark Epstein succeed in getting all of the interview video footage released? We’ll see, but if it really was intended to be a reputation washing exercise like he asserts, odds are Bannon isn’t going to be super keen on revealing all of the footage. At least not the parts that were intended to put Epstein in a positive light.
At the same time, given the evidence pointing towards Bannon’s aspirations to become a kind of new Epstein, we have to ask: did he succeed at all? Like what did Steve Bannon learn from Epstein about the art of elite blackmail? Was he ever privy to the blackmail evidence Epstein possessed? We have no idea.
But let’s keep in mind that all of the evidence that Bannon was convinced Epstein was an intelligence asset who possessed elite blackmail material doubles as further circumstantial evidence around the ongoing mysteries surrounding Epstein’s death. Recall how Mark Epstein wanted to file a wrongful death lawsuit but the executors of Epstein’s estate blocked it. Epstein felt like it would be a “slam dunk” case. As we’ve seen, the executors of that estate have been left with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets to be used at their discretion in keeping with a will Epstein crafted just days before his death. And the only reason so much money is left to the estate is the decision of federal prosecutors to NOT further pursue those assets on behalf of Epstein’s victims. The more Epstein’s death looks like a government coverup, the more we need to ask: so what role is Steve Bannon playing in the contemporary game of elite blackmail? Bannon is kind of the closest thing we have to a direct Epstein successor at this point.
In fact, as Mark Epstein recently stated, he was told by his brother back in 2016 that if he went public with what he knew about Donald Trump they would have to cancel the election. Mark claims that’s a direct quote. And the guy with that level of blackmail material on him ascended to the presidency. And got reelected even after Epstein mysteriously died in a federal prison under his watch.
Also recall how, when Mark Epstein first started going public back in March of 2023 with his concerns about the official investigation into his brother’s death, one of the mysteries at that time was why the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) report on the investigation was taking so long to be released. It had been over three years at that point. Well, as we’re going to see below, that OIG report was eventually released in June of 2023. Mark Epstein remained woefully unpersuaded, with the report leaving many glaring questions unanswered. Michael Baden — the high profile forensic pathologist hired by Mark Epstein to witness the autopsy — similarly remained unconvinced.
It just keeps festering. The more we learn, the worse this looks. And not just for President Trump:
““He told me he has like 15 or 16 hours of videotape of Jeff. He was trying to help Jeff rehabilitate his reputation,” Mark Epstein said of Bannon. He said his meeting and conversation with Bannon took place in New York City after his brother’s death in prison — in either 2019 or 2020.”
Wait, so Steve Bannon held all these interviews in order to rehabilitate Epstein’s reputation? Really?! Because, wow, that’s quite a revelation. And while Bannon hasn’t hid the fact that he’s been working on this documentary, the spin he’s been publicly putting on it is how the documentary will reveal how Epstein was inextricably linked to intelligence services. Keep in mind that the bombshell reporting in the Miami Herald that resulted in Epstein’s arrest first went public at the end of November 2018. So we have to ask: was that occasion where Bannon was caught entering Epstein’s New York residence in late 2018 in the month of December? Either way, the available evidence is that Bannon and Epstein were allies until Epstein’s 2018 arrest, which is pretty critical context for interpreting any documentary Bannon might eventually release. It’s also why the calls for Bannon to release all of the video footage is so relevant. Again, Bannon wanted to become the new Epstein. The new master of elite blackmail. Which is kind of a conflict of interest for someone promising to release an Epstein documentary:
And then there’s Mark Epstein’s repeated statements to the media about how he is increasingly convinced his brother was murdered:
And that brings us to the following report on Mark Epstein’s ongoing attempts to publicly raise the alarm over what he sees as a giant government coverup in the murder of his brother. And as Mark Epstein claims, his brother told him back in 2016 that if he ever went public with what he knew about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, they would have to cancel the elections:
““He didn’t tell me what he knew, but that’s what he said, and I’ve been public about that before, that shouldn’t come as a shock,” he said. “He didn’t tell me what he knew, but he said if he said what he knew, he’d have to cancel the election. That’s a direct quote.””
They would have had to cancel the 2016 election had what Jeffrey Epstein knew about Trump became public. That’s what Mark Epstein was apparently told by his brother back in 2016. A quote that sure sounds plausible given the ongoing meltdown of the Trump administration as it continues to fail at ‘changing the subject’.
And as Mark Epstein has been publicly warning for years, his conviction that his brother was murdered is based on the fact that the two forensic pathologists who were actually there for the autopsy concluded that they couldn’t declare is a suicide, with Michael Baden stating that he felt it was more consistent with the homicide. It was the New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson (not “Samson”), who eventually asserted that it was consistent with a suicide. According to Epstein, Sampson never personally examined the body:
Next, let’s take a look at what DOJ’s Office of Inspector General concluded about the Epstein death back in a report released in June of 2023. Recall how Mark Epstein voiced many of his concerns about the investigation into his brother’s death in a Business Insider piece published in March of 2023. And as we can see, Mark Epstein remained very unpersuaded by the report’s findings. Or as he put it at the time, it was “blatant bullsh#t”:
“On Tuesday morning, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General published its long-awaiting report into Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Epstein — a wealthy financier who ran in the same circles as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Prince Andrew — was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell the morning of August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.”
The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General did indeed belated issue its report on Epstein’s death back in June of 2023, several months after a Business Insider interview with Mark Epstein where he described the numerous flaws in the official ‘suicide’ conclusion. And as we can see, not only was Mark Epstein not persuaded by the findings, but Michael Baden also stuck to his earlier conclusion that the evidence pointed towards homicide. Both Epstein and Baden point to a karate blow to the neck as a possible explanation for the injuries around the neck. Importantly, it appears the inspector general’s office never even spoke to Baden:
Investigators did, however, eventually speak with Kristen Roman, the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy where Baden was present. As we’ve seen, Roman reportedly initially left the autopsy unable to determine whether it was suicide or homicide, telling Baden that she hadn’t come to a conclusion and listing the cause of death as “pending further study”. So it sounds like Roman eventually came around to the same ‘suicide’ conclusion that her boss asserted. But it would be interesting to know if that “further study” ever actually happened because there’s no indication that ever happened:
Also not how Mark Epstein’s description of the sequence of events that happened after Epstein’s body was initially found in his cell doesn’t align with this report. According Mark, the official narrative was that the guards who found his brother’s body initially tried to do CPR on him and then transported him to the hospital but, in fact, his body was first transported to the infirmary. Now, it appears this report does include that detail. So either Mark Epstein was confused about the initial official story he was being told, or that official story was updated:
And then we get an update on the status of whether or not the doors to Epstein’s cell were unlocked. As we’ve seen, Mark Epstein asserted prior to the release of this OIG report that the public had never been informed on the freedom of movement inside the special housing unit where Epstein was held. Well, according to this OIG report, the doors were locked and three other inmates never saw anything. Of course, if this really was a coordinated execution and another inmate really was used to carry out an attack, we shouldn’t exactly an accurate accounting of whether or not the doors were unlocked. Which is a reminder that we shouldn’t have to rely on questioning other inmates at all because the cameras that were recording the area around Epstein’s cell should have held all the answers. But those cameras mysteriously malfunctioned just weeks after Epstein’s arrival. So while this OIG report would seem to dismiss questions about whether or not Epstein could have been attacked by another inmate, the fact that the cameras that could have answered those questions conveniently all malfunctioned in the first place suggests we’re already dealing with a preemptive coverup of the facts:
More questions we’ll never have answered. At least not answers we can have any confidence in. The US justice system doesn’t seem capable of handling the Epstein case. At least handling it in a manner that doesn’t look like a giant coverup. The kind of giant blatant coverup that wouldn’t have happened had Epstein not been seen as someone carrying out important work by powerful interests. The kind of important work that would presumably still go on under someone else’s direction after Epstein was taken down. So if it turns out Epstein does indeed have a replacement, keep in mind that the DOJ will presumably also be incapable of eventually handling any sort of honest investigation into that individual too. Whether that’s Bannon or someone else. It’s one of the double-edged swords inherent in being someone like Jeffrey Epstein: you’ll probably be murdered one day if your operation is ever exposed...but your murder and your operation will be covered up enough to at least keep the most scandalous parts a secret forever. It’s not hard to see why Bannon might find that appealing.
The more we observe and study it, the worse it looks. It’s like bad art. But the official investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘suicide’ isn’t art. It’s a coverup. A bad blatant coverup that just gets more and more glaringly awful. Which brings us to the stunning new analysis just released by CBS News. The report is like a collage of investigative deception and malfeasance. A litany of official lies.
For starters, we got a number of updates about that ‘missing minute’ from the surveillance video. As we’ve seen, that ‘missing minute’ comes right before midnight and appears to be the end of the first of two video clips that were stitched together. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed this was normal and all of the cameras at the jail had a missing minute before midnight every evening as part of some sort of system reset. And as we’ve also seen, the metadata in the video indicated that missing minute from the end of the first clip was actually closer to a missing three minutes, which strongly suggested that the video of that missing minute exists somewhere. Well, according to anonymous sources who spoke to CBS, the government is indeed in possession of that missing minute of footage. We’ve received no explanation for why Bondi claimed there was a system ‘reset’ every evening that caused the missing minute. Also of note is the fact that the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) report that was released back in June of 2023 makes no mention of a missing minute.
But then we got this remarkable additional detail: we are told an unnamed staffer with the title Materials Handler was on duty from 4 PM to midnight and that it is assumed this staffer would have left the Special Housing Unit (SHU) during that minute (presumably because they aren’t caught leaving at some other time on the video). So not only does the government have the footage of that missing minute, but there’s a high chance that someone actually left the unit during that minute. And since the video footage is supposed to capture who was entering and exiting the tier of the SHU where Epstein was house, this Materials Handler may have been caught on camera leaving during that missing minute.
Oh, but it gets worse. Because it’s also entirely possible that Materials Manager wasn’t caught on camera leaving at all for an incredible suspicious reason: CBS used the available information from the various investigations to reconstruct the layout of the SHU and determine where exactly was capture on video inside the unit from the two functioning cameras. They concluded that it was actually possible for someone to have entered and exited the tier where Epstein was held without being caught on camera! Yep, the narrative we’ve been getting from the government about how the surveillance video would have captured everyone entering and leaving the area where Epstein was held was simply incorrect. Only one of the two functioning cameras was purportedly covering a staircase that led up to the tier where Epstein was held. But as CBS found, only a slight edge of the staircase was actually on the video and it was possible for someone to ascend the staircase without being caught on video at all. How do we know this is the case? Because Epstein shows up on the video in the first 10 minutes (at approximately 7:50 pm), when he is seen walking towards that staircase to return to his cell. Epstein isn’t actually seen ascending the staircase on the video. So when we ask why on earth they might have been tempted to cover up the fact that the Materials Manager left during that ‘missing minute’, keep in mind it’s possible that the footage unmistakably reveals just how easy it would be for someone to use that staircase without being seen. In other words, imagine if the footage just barely shows a glimpse of the Materials Manager for a frame or two. That would have made it unambiguously clear to the public that the video wasn’t actually completely capturing who was using that staircase.
The reason Epstein was away from his cell that day before returning is also rather interesting. Recall how, as we’ve seen, Epstein had just returned after spending the day meeting with his legal team. August 9, 2019, was also the day a federal appeals court unsealed 2000 pages of testimony with graphic testimony from the victims of both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. August 9 was also the day Epstein’s cellmate, Efrain Reyes, was released. A replacement cellmate was supposed to be assigned due to the apparent suicide attempt two weeks earlier, but no replacement was given. After returning from meeting with his lawyers at approximately 7:49 pm, Epstein asks to call his mother (who was long dead at that point) and actually called his Belarussian girlfriend, who is one of the main beneficiaries in a trust he set up the day before that contained $577 million in assets at the time. And as we’ve also seen, the executors of that estate have been left with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets to be used at their discretion in keeping with a will Epstein crafted just days before his death. And the only reason so much money is left to the estate is the decision of federal prosecutors to NOT further pursue those assets on behalf of Epstein’s victims. We are now told it was the senior officer in charge of the unit who facilitated that unmonitored phone call to Epstein’s girlfriend. The Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) Northeast regional director later told investigators that the unmonitored call was extremely concerning, adding: “We don’t know what happened on that phone. It could have potentially led to the incident [Epstein’s death], but we don’t — we will never know.”
And as this CBS analysis found, the OIG report appears to have made a mistake that concealed a direct contradiction by one of the two security guards in charge of watching over Epstein. Recall how those two guards, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were found to have slept or browsed online throughout the evening of Epstein’s death, falsifying the records indicating that were conducting welfare checks every 30 minutes. While Noel and Thomas were charged over their actions that evening, the charges were eventually dropped. No other prison officials faced any punishment over Epstein’s death.
And according to the OIG report, Noel stated that she left Epstein alone in the shower area where he made his unmonitored phone call. She then left the area to use the restroom and when she returned, Epstein had already been escorted to his cell by someone else. But the video appears to show Noel personally escorting Epstein to the staircase. Why Noel would have misled investigators about a detail like that remains very unclear.
Another discrepancy involving what Noel told investigators related to the security for entering and exiting the SHU from the rest of the prison. Two doors — one operated remotely and one that requires a physical key — controlled access to the SHU. The doors were conveniently not captured on camera. But Noel told investigators that only she and Thomas possessed that key. And yet, video evidence shows several people entering and existing while Thomas and Noel was seen nowhere near the door. Importantly, that entrance to the SHU is in an area NOT captured in the ‘raw footage’ surveillance video and a pathway from that entrance to the staircase leading up to Epstein’s wing is also off camera. So people inside the SHU could have not only ascend the staircase to Epstein’s tier without being caught on camera, but it’s possible people entered the SHU, ascended that staircase, and exited without being caught on camera. According to Jim Stafford, a video forensics expert, “To say that there’s no way that someone could get to that — the stair up to his room — without being seen is false.” That was an opinion shared by four other leading video forensics experts CBS News spoke with.
Another discrepancy observed by the forensic experts involves a image of something ascending the staircase to Epstein’s tier at 10:40 pm that evening. This is the last time any motion is captured on that stairway leading to Epstein’s tier before Epstein’s body is found the next day. It’s described as an orange shape moving up the stairs. The OIG report concluded that a corrections officer, who was believed to be Noel, carried linen or inmate clothing up to the tier where Epstein was housed. But the video forensics experts suggested that the shape could be a person dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit. Recall how Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, has long questioned whether or not another prisoner could have killed his brother and asked for clarity on whether or not prisoners had freedom of movement inside the SHU and access to other prisoners. The OIG report asserted that the cell doors were locked in the SHU and prisoners did not have freedom of movement, although Mark Epstein remained unconvinced. And now we learn that someone wearing an orange jumpsuit may have ascended the staircase at 10:40 pm.
And there’s an additional discrepancy regarding who was inside the SHU that evening: according to the OIG report, only two staff members entered the SHU after midnight: a corrections officer, identified as “CO3,” and the Morning Watch Operations Lieutenant. But a third unidentified individual passes through the SHU at 12:05 am. Was this the Materials Manager, leaving 5 minutes late? We aren’t told. Adding to the questions regarding who had access to the area where Epstein was held that evening is the fact that only 3 inmates voluntarily spoke with investigators despite the fact that the tier can house as many as 14 prisoners.
yes, according to this CBS report, the ‘missing minute’ isn’t just a gross lie. It also may have covered up the fact that Materials Manager apparently left right at that time. But even if we had that ‘minute missing’ footage, it’s very possible we wouldn’t have captured footage of the Materials Manager’s exit because the footage doesn’t actually cover the staircase leading up to Epstein’s tier, nor does it capture an exit/entrance to the SHU. And then there’s the mysterious orange shape at 10:40 pm that may have been a prisoner, along with the mystery employee at 12:05 am. So while we can’t conclude what exactly happened that evening, we have more than enough evidence at this point to confidently conclude we’re looking at a coverup. A rather low quality coverup, all things considered:
“CBS News also digitally reconstructed the Special Housing Unit, or SHU, where Epstein was held, using diagrams and descriptions from the 2023 report on Epstein released by the Justice Department inspector general. The CBS News review found the video does little to provide evidence to support claims that were later made by federal officials. Additionally, CBS News has identified multiple inconsistencies between that report and the video that raise serious questions about the accuracy of witness statements and the thoroughness of the government’s investigation.”
The evidence just keeps piling up: not only is the official investigation into the Epstein ‘suicide’ wildly flawed in terms of inadequacies. It’s filled with so direct contradictions that we have to question the underlying accuracy of the witness statements and evidence the investigation is based on. In other words, we’re looking at a cover up. CBS News doesn’t explicitly put it in those terms, but that’s clearly what we are looking at with this latest report. Starting with the fact that the video footage that we were repeatedly told covers the entrances to the tier where Epstein was being houses doesn’t actually cover all of the entrances. Instead, we find that one of the staircases leading up to Epstein’s cell block only has a faint outline of part of the staircase visible in the video. And we don’t have to speculate whether or not someone could ascend that staircase without being seen on video. Jeffrey Epstein literally does exactly that in the first 10 minutes of the video, when he is seen walking towards the stairway but never ascending. And as the report also noted, the primary entrance to the SHU is also off camera which means someone could have entered from that primary entrance, ascending the staircase, and then exited without ever being caught on camera. As one forensics expert put it, “To say that there’s no way that someone could get to that — the stair up to his room — without being seen is false.” And that’s just one of the glaring lies we’ve been told about this investigation:
Adding to the mystery is the fact that the SHU entrance had two doors. One remotely operated and one that requires a physical key. Tova Noel told investigators she and Michael Thomas were the only ones in possession of a physical key. And yet multiple people are seen entering and exiting that door without Noel or Thomas being present at all. As a result, we have reason to suspect that it’s possible people could have surreptitiously entered the SHU. Conveniently, these doors were not being captured by any functioning cameras so we’re forced to speculate:
And then we get to the discrepancies in the testimonies of the guards and the ambiguity around the footage of people ascending that obscured staircase. In one case, an orange shape is seen moving up the stairs at approximately 10:40 pm. The OIG determined that the orange shape was linen or inmate clothing being carried up the stairs by one of the guards, Tova Noel. And yet the video forensic experts appeared to conclude that the orange blob was likely a person dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit. So it’s possible a prisoner entered Epstein’s wing at 10:40 pm and the official investigation has somehow waved it away. Which makes this a good time to recall how Mark Epstein has long questioned whether or not his brother may have been killed by another prisoner. As we saw, when the OIG released its report in June of 2023, that report asserted that the door to Epstein’s cell was locked and the other prisoners didn’t have freedom of movement. And yet, with all of these found discrepancies in this investigation, it’s getting increasingly hard to even take those assertions about locked cell doors at face value. And, of course, we have to engage in this speculation because the cameras directly covering Epstein’s cell just happened to be non-functional and the footage was lost. What a coincidence:
Then there’s the incredible unmonitored phone call Epstein was allowed to make right before his one and only appearance in the video at 7:40 PM when he is escorted back to his cell. Amazingly, it sounds like Epstein was allowed to call his girlfriend in Belarus using a phone line intended only for attorney communications. Recall how Epstein reportedly had been meeting with his lawyers before he made the request to ‘call his mother’, making the use of a phone for attorney communications all the more bizarre. Epstein wasn’t supposed to be allowed to make a call like that. And yet it happened, just hours before his death. And as we can see, while Tova Noel told officials that someone else escorted Epstein back to his cell, the video shows Noel doing the escorting. It’s a strange detail to lie about, but keep in mind that this is the last time Epstein is spotted on video:
And when we see how charges were ultimately dropped and Noel and Thomas while no other prison officials were punished at all, recall how Tova and Noel falsified the records of their required check-ins extensively. Also recall how they had to do those 30-minute check-ins because of a prior apparent suicide attempt which also resulted in Epstein getting a new cellmate, Efrain Reyes. But Reyes was released on the morning of August 9. A new cellmate was expected but none was ever provided. It was a cascade of ‘mistakes’ and outright fraud that led up to Epstein’s death. And no one was punished:
And then we get to the growing number of discrepancies around the ‘raw footage’ released by the DOJ. As we’ve learned, it wasn’t raw footage and wasn’t complete. Instead, the released ‘raw footage’ was comprised of two video files seemingly stitched together at the midnight hour, with a missing minute right before midnight. Attorney General Pam Bondi assured the world that this was all a normal part of how the video system worked and a minute was missing every night before midnight for all of the cameras. Then we learned that the first part of that ‘raw footage’ leading up to midnight was actually missing almost three minutes, which strongly indicated that the ‘missing minute’ actually exists. And now we’re learning that an unnamed staffer with the title Materials Handler was on duty from 4 pm to midnight and it is assumed he left the unit during that missing minute. Beyond that, sources close to the investigation are now acknowledging that Bondi basically lied when she claimed this missing minute is just a normal thing. Instead, it sounds like investigators are in possession of full raw footage without the missing minute. So that was a blatant lie, seemingly intended to cover up footage of the Materials Handler leaving Epstein’s cellblock right before midnight. Why try to hide this? Well, keep in mind what we already saw: the pathway from the entrance of the SHU to that mostly obscured staircase was off-camera and someone could have entered and left the SHU without being seen. So if this Materials Handler exited during that minute and headed straight for that exit, it’s possible that it’s a very obscured exit but still noticeable, which, in turn, would have made the potential for a completely obscured entrance/exit much more clear to the public. In other words, the suspicious part wouldn’t necessary be that this employee was leaving right before midnight. Instead, the suspicious part would be the fact that we might barely be able to see that it happened, raising all sorts of questions about what we couldn’t see:
And then we learn about two other cameras in the vicinity that were working. We are told that the cameras provide no useful information. And yet, as experts observe, there’s one very useful piece of information they could have revealed: whether or not there really is a ‘missing minute’ built into the security camera system. Now, at this point we’ve basically been told by anonymous insiders that, yes, the missing minute exists. But also keep in mind that with a “Materials Manager” apparently leaving at midnight it’s possible that would have been captured too. But it’s going to be interesting to see if the DOJ ever releases that additional footage. At this point it would be suspicious if they didn’t:
Finally, note how Robert Hood, a former Bureau of Prisons chief of internal affairs and warden of the Supermax facility in Colorado, review the OIG report and basically called for the new Bureau of Prison’s director to conduct a new investigation:
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that new investigation. At the same time, it’s pretty clear that this story isn’t going away. Especially since, the more we learn, the worse it gets. A festering in-your-face coverup, taunting the world with the blatant awfulness we can all see. And the even worse stuff we aren’t allowed see, no matter how absurd the coverup gets.
They found the missing minute. Mystery solved. Well, not really. We still have zero idea why the footage of the Special Housing Unit (SHU) on the night Jeffrey Epstein died had a missing minute right before midnight in the first place. Nor do we know why Attorney General Pam Bondi decided to completely lie and insist that this was just a normal part of the security system that happens every night. But we now have that missing minute, thanks to Congress.
So what does the missing minute contain? Not much, although it does give us an answer regarding one mystery: the missing materials handler. Recall how it was previously speculated that the missing minute might contain the exit of the materials handler, who was just finishing up his 8 hour shift that ended at midnight. But also recall how we learned that it was very possible for someone to have used the stairs leading up to Epstein’s tier without being caught on camera at all, raising the question of whether or not the materials manager’s exit was going to get captured by the video cameras. It was even possible for someone to have used the main entrance to the SHU and the stairway up to the tier where Epstein was held without being caught on camera at all, raising the possibility that someone could have entered the SHU, went up to Epstein’s tier, and then left without being captured on camera at all. That glaring hole in the surveillance footage is part of the context of that missing minute because if the materials manager was never caught on camera leaving at all it would be evidence of the ability for someone to leave the SHU outside of the camera’s view.
Well, it turns out the materials handler can be seen walking away from the guard desk during this missing minute, walking off screen heading in the direction of the SHU’s main entrance. No explanation has been provided for why the minute was missing in the first place. Notably, while we are told the materials manager does pass in front of the stairs leading to Epstein’s tier, we are also told he does not appear to be approaching the cells where Epstein resided, but instead seemed to be heading out of the SHU. But the fact that we have to infer where he was heading is part of this overall scandal. Because for all we know, maybe this employee headed up to Epstein’s tier, committed a murder, and then left, all without being captured on camera. Or maybe someone else entered and left. We have no idea but this shouldn’t be an area of speculation and the fact that we have to speculate at all — thanks to the abundance of broken cameras — is implicitly suspicious. So while the footage of the materials handler does answer the question of where was that footage of this employee leaving, it also underscores the major holes in the camera’s ability to capture who was coming and going from that facility.
So it would appear the ongoing allegations of foul play by Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, keep gathering strength. The more we learn the worse it gets. So it’s worth noting another very interesting angle to this story involving Mark Epstein: it turns out Mark was much more involved in his brother’s ‘business’ than generally recognized. It’s an involvement that becomes apparent when we look at the very interesting and mysterious history surrounding the Manhattan property that served as Epstein’s New York residence from 1996 until the time of his 2018 arrest. Recall how Business Insider had a piece in 2009 suggesting Epstein may have been running a Bernie Madoff-style ponzi scheme. In fact, one of his early employers in the finance sector, Steve Hoffenberg, was convicted of running one of the largest ponzi schemes in US history. Then there’s weirdness surrounding his Manhattan Townhouse. Epstein somehow purchased, or received, his Manhattan townhouse from Wexner in the mid-90s, but there were no property records on the transfer until 2011 when the company Wexner used to the buy the place transferred it to an Epstein-owned company for $0. Epstein signed the document for both sides. Epstein was basically given his Manhattan mansion by Les Wexner. Why?
Well, while we don’t have answers to that ‘why’, a 2019 investigation by Crain’s New York found a very intriguing trail of real estate transactions involving that estate, along with the adjacent property. It started in 1988, when an entity called SAM Conversion Corp purchased the adjacent estate, 11 East 71st Street. Bob Knakal, the real estate agent for the sellers, revealed the who sold that property in a short Youtube post in January of this year: the Rolling Stones. It was the Rollings Stones’ crash pad for when they were in the NYC area, filled with foosball tables, pool tables, and lots of alcohol. So in 1988, the Rolling Stones’ crash pad was sold to SAM Conversion Corp. The next year, a Nine East 71st Street Corp. purchased the adjacent 9 East 71st Street property. Both SAM Conversion and Nine East 71st Street Corps used the same Columbus, Ohio, address associated with Leslie Wexner’s Limited Brands. Then, in 1992, SAM Conversion Corp ‘sold’ the 11 E. 71st Street property to 11 East 71st Street Trust. Sale documents show Jeffrey Epstein listed as both the vice president of Sam Conversion Corp. and a trustee of the 11 East 71st Street Trust, which also uses the same Columbus, Ohio, address.
So Wexner and Epstein jointly purchase both the Rolling Stones’ former crash pad and also the much adjacent larger estate. But it doesn’t appear that anyone is actually using the estates until Epstein moves into the 9 E. 71st St property in 1996. That same year, 11 East 71st Street Trust sells the 11 E. 71st St property to Comet Trust. This turns out to be a very interesting entity. Comet Trust is one of the family trusts set up for the Bronfman family fortune which is particularly notable in part because Edgar Bronfman Jr.‘s name shows up in Epstein’s “black book”.
The trustee managing Comet Trust is also rather notable: Guido Goldman, founder of the German Marshall Fund. As we’ve seen, the German Marshall Fund has been characterized by Paul Manning as a public relations front for German industrial interests under the guise of a think-tank. In other words, the guy handling the Bronfman family’s trust fund helped establish an Underground Reich public relations entity. And that’s who got to purchase the estate immediately adjacent to Epstein’s blackmail mansion. While the exact price isn’t known, the taxes paid suggest a $6.2 million price tag.
Then, in 1998, Comet Trust sells the property to none other than Howard Lutnick, President Trump’s current Secretary of Commerce, for an estimated $7.6 million. So Lutnick and Epstein were immediate neighbors for roughly two decades before Epstein’s 2018. As we should expect, Lutnick now insists he had no personal relationship or even contact with Epstein at all.
While Epstein used the 9 E. 71st St as his personal residence up until his 2018 arrest, the property has its ownership again transferred in 2011 to a Maple Inc entity. The signature for the buyer and seller in that transaction are identical. The Nine East 71st Street Corp. became inactive in 2015 and records show Jeffrey Epstein was the CEO at the time.
Now here’s where Mark Epstein figures into the story: the listed address for Nine East 71st Street Corp. was unit 10F at 301 E. 66th St. That unit and building belong to 301/66 Owners Corp, an affiliate of Ossa Properties, Mark Epstein’s real estate company. Yes, Mark Epstein’s real estate company owned the property listed as the headquarters for the entity that owned Jeffrey’s 9 E. 71st St residence. But beyond that, lawyers for some of Epstein’s victims claim that Epstein even rented out apartments at the 301 E. 66th St. building for some of his victims. So it would appear Mark Epstein’s property was at least indirectly involved with his brother’s sex trafficking activities. Which could at least in part explain Mark’s keen interest in exposing the apparent murder of his brother. Don’t forget that it was Mark who hired forensic pathologist Michael Baden to attend his brother’s autopsy, with Baden concluding that it looked like a homicide.
But there’s another mystery in this sequence of events: The 11 E. 71st and 11 E. 71st Street buildings were purchased in 1988 and 1989, but Jeffrey didn’t move into his 9 E 71st St residence until 1996, the same year the 11 E. 71st residence was sold to Comet Trust. But there’s no public record of Epstein, or Wexner, or anyone using the 11 E. 71st residence at all during this period despite the 11 E. 71st building having previously served as crash pad for the Rolling Stones. What was that 11 E. 71st building even used for during that 8 year period? And what about the 9 E. 71st property next door? The building had been a private school when Wexner purchased it in 1989, so it’s not hard to imagine there was extensive work done on the property. Including all of the specialized work that would have been included in the process of turning the estate into a blackmail hub. Hidden cameras and associated technology. But was it just getting refurbished during that entire 89–96 period? Were any parties thrown there? Special events? We have no idea. But, again, the 11 E. 71st building had just been the Rolling Stones’ NYC crash pad when they purchased it. That seems like a great place to throw an elite party. And don’t forget that Epstein’s party days with Donald Trump overlapped with the late 80s and early 90s. If there were parties being thrown at these properties, there’s a good chance President Trump was there.
That’s all part of the context of the ongoing scandal involving the imprisonment and subsequent apparent murder of Jeffrey Epstein in a federal prison. We now have the ‘missing minute’. And yet that missing minute only serves to underscore the fact that people were capable of entering and leaving Epstein’s tier of the prison without being caught on camera. The kind of scenario Mark Epstein has been warning about. But then there’s the ongoing mystery around the Manhattan real estate deals. A mystery that includes what these two properties were even being used for before Jeffrey moved into the 9 E 71st St residence in 1996, the same year the 11 E 71st property was sold to Comet Trust, a Bronfman family trust managed by Guido Goldman, the founder of the German Marshall Fund. Two years later, Comet Trust sells the property to Howard Lutnick who would spend the next two decades as Epstein’s New York neighbor. And it turns out one of the trusts used by Epstein and Wexner to purchase the 9 E 71st St resident was located in a building owned by Mark Epstein’s Ossa Properties. A building where Jeffrey would rent apartments for use by his victims. The more we learn, the more mysterious it gets:
Well, that’s our answer. Or as close to an answer as we’re going to get. The material handler did indeed leave during that missing minute. We have no idea why exactly this was cut out from the beginning but it’s notable for the fact that the disappearance of the employee demonstrates the reality that the exit to the SHU was off camera and, therefore, someone could have entered and exited the SHU — and even accessed the stairs to Epstein’s tier — without ever being caught on camera. It’s a seeming confirmation of the kind of murder scenario Mark Epstein has been warning about.
Next, here’s a look at one of chapters of this story that also ties back to Mark Epstein: the mysterious Manhattan property purchases that resulted in Epstein being effectively given the mansion at 9 E 71st Street in 1996 to make into his personal residence and ended with Howard Lutnick as his long-time neighbor:
“When approached for comment on the property and Lutnick’s relationship with his former neighbor, the Commerce Department told Newsweek that the pair “had no personal relationship, contact, or direct dealings.””
No personal relationship, contact, or direct dealings. That’s the line Howard Lutnick is going with in describing his relationship with someone who had been his immediate neighbor for two decades before Epstein’s 2018 arrest. Is that a plausible answer? It’s not like anyone thinks Lutnick and Epstein were close personal party buddies as was the case with Trump and Epstein. But it pretty hard to believe the two had no personal contact. They had to cross paths every once in a while. But Lutnick’s relationship with Epstein is just one of the many questions swirling around the 11 E. 71st St. that has been Lutnick’s home since his 1998 purchase. Because as we’re going to see, it’s very unclear what that property was used for at all after its 1988 purchase and eventual 1998 sale to Lutnick. One of the primest pieces of Manhattan real estate — the Rolling Stones’ former crash pad — went on to have a mystery decade. Part of that mystery involves the fact that Epstein was listed as an owner of both 11 E. 71st St. and the adjacent 9 E. 71st St. before the 11 E. 71st St. property was sold to Comet Trust in 1996. So Epstein had some sort of mysterious ownership to the Rolling Stones’s former NYC crash pad from 1988–1996. Then Comet Trust holds onto the property for a couple of years before selling it to Lutnick in 1998. What was the former Rolling Stone crash pad getting used for during this period?
Next, here’s a look at that 2019 Crain’s report on those mysterious Manhattan real estate deals. Part of the mystery involves Mark Epstein’s Ossa Properties. But there’s also the mystery of whether or not Comet Trust, and then Howard Lutnick, were selected to be neighbors for what was ultimately a highly sensitive operation:
“But a Crain’s investigation found that Epstein’s history at the address is entangled with the adjacent property, 11 E. 71st St., now home to billionaire Howard Lutnick—as well as with 301 E. 66th St., a building belonging to Epstein’s brother.”
Yep, the Epstein Manhattan real estate mystery history is really about three address: 9 and 11 E. 71st Street, but also 301 E. 66th St., a building owned by his brother Mark. And as this Crain’s report describes, much of that mystery has to do with Epstein’s ambiguous role in the entities that handled the initial purchases of the 9 and 11 E. 71st Street estates. It started in 1988, when SAM Conversion Corp. purchased 11 E. 71st St., presumably from the Rolling Stones. That was followed by the 1989 purchase of the nextdoor 9 E. 71st St. property by the Nine East 71st Street Corp. Both of these corporate entities had the same address associated with Leslie Wexner’s Limited Brands. Then, in 1992, SAM Conversion Corp sells the 11 E. 71st St. property to 11 East 71st Street Trust for an undisclosed price (with $10 as the public placeholder). Records for that transaction list Epstein as both the vice president of SAM Conversion Corp and a trustee of 11 East 71st Street Trust, with the same Limited Brand address again listed for both. It’s unclear why the 11 E. 71st St. property was transferred between two entities run by Wexner and Epstein, but the fact that it happened solidifies the the fact that it was Wexner who was serving as Epstein’s backer and guide during these earlier years as a player in this network:
And then we get to the 1996 transaction, where that 11 E. 71st St. property was sold to Comet Trust. But unlike the prior transactions, this one appear to involve an actual sale to new owners for around $6.2 million. So who are the people behind Comet Trust? Well, the trustee of Comet Trust listed on the sale documents list Guido Goldman, the founder of the German Marshall Fund, an entity Paul Manning characterized as a public relations front for German industrial interests under the guise of a think-tank. But that’s not the only interesting figure tied to Comet Trust. It also turns out Comet Trust owns a portion of the de Gunzburg/Bronfman family fortune. As we’ve seen, the Bronfman family has an interesting relationship to the Epstein saga. In addition to Edgar Bronfman Jr.‘s name showing up in the ‘black book’, there’s also fact that his uncle, Charles Bronfman, was a co-founder of the pro-Israel think-tank Mega Group, along with Les Wexner. And as we’ve seen, Charles Bronfman and Robert Mawxwell were business partners. So when we see that a trust that holds of portion of the Bronfman family fortune was the buyer of that that 11 E. 71st St. property, this should probably be seen as a transaction between business partners and close associates. And don’t forget what else happened in 1996: Epstein finally moved into the 9 E. 71st property next door. After years of presumably preparing that property into a spy haven. So when they made that sale to Comet Trust, they were in the position to determine who their neighbor was going to be for the super blackmail estate they were opening that year as Epstein’s new Manhattan residence:
Two years later, in 1998, this 11 E. 71st St. property is sold again. This time to Howard Lutnick, Trump’s current Commerce Secretary, for an estimate $7.6 million. Which raises the question: did the sale by Comet Trust to Lutnick include considerations of the blackmail intelligence operation taking place next door? How aware was the Bronfman-family trust of Epstein’s affairs next door. And what about Lutnick? What did he know about Epstein
And then we get to the interesting role Mark Epstein played in this story. It turns out the listed address for Nine East 71st Street Corp. was unit 10F at 301 E. 66th St., which, in turn, was owned by 301/66 Owners Corp, an affiliate of Mark Epstein’s Ossa Properties. But beyond being the listed location of Nine East 71st Street Corp., it appears that 301 E. 66th St. property was at times rented out by Jeffrey Epstein to provide housing for the girls he was abusing. And it would appear so many girls were staying there a city inspector visited the building in response to a complaint that the property was being used as a hotel. So when we see Mark Epstein taking a keen interest in his brother’s ‘suicide’, keep in mind he was likely directly involved with his brother’s illicit activities on some level or at least aware:
Now, here’s a quick look at a 2003 piece in Vanity Fair all about the Jeffrey Epstein’s rising profile as a mysterious socialite. Where a big part of the mystery is simply the real nature of relationship with Leslie Wexner, the man who has seemingly given Epstein everything. Including one of the fanciest homes in Manhattan:
” The entrance hall is decorated not with paintings but with row upon row of individually framed eyeballs; these, the owner tells people with relish, were imported from England, where they were made for injured soldiers. Next comes a marble foyer, which does have a painting, in the manner of Jean Dubuffet … but the host coyly refuses to tell visitors who painted it. In any case, guests are like pygmies next to the nearby twice-life-size sculpture of a naked African warrior.”
A display of individually framed eyeballs in the entrance hall. How subtle. You almost have to wonder if guests knew they were about to have compromising evidence collected against them. A price of admission to the club. And as we can see in this 2003 report, he was already quite a mysterious figure, even among the high society figures he was rubbing elbows with. Figures like Donald Trump. And part of that mystery had to do with the fact that he was clearly quite wealthy and yet it was unclear what exactly he does or who he works for, with Leslie Wexner being his only ‘client’. Of course, Wexner was much more than Epstein’s client, which is a reflection of the fact that we don’t actually know who Epstein worked for when acquiring all of his wealth:
And we when see how Epstein apparently would get annoyed with the idea that Wexner “made him”, while insisting that it’s more of a “partnership of equals”, there’s remains to this day no explanation for why Wexner seemed to just gift that 9 E 71st Street mansion to Epstein, with Epstein making it his personal residence in 1996. Part of the explanation presumably has to do with the fact that Wexner signed the power of fiduciary over all of his private trusts and foundations over to Epstein. But, again, why? Why hand over control of your fortune to Epstein? We’ve never received anything remotely close to a sensible answer on that:
Again, the more we learn, the more mysterious it gets. Well, not the jail death part. The more we learn about that, the more it looks like murder. Murder and a shoddy cover up. It’s everything else that keeps getting more mysterious.
The more we learn, the worse it gets. It’s a now enduring theme for the Jeffrey Epstein story. It just keeps getting worse, with the following recent pair of updates being no exception.
For starters, CBS News recently published a report that was basically an expert review of job investigators did into Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged suicide. The report wasn’t based on any newly released information. Instead, it appears to be based on evidence that was already publicly released and that CBS decided to review following the released of the official finds that are filled with so many contradictions. Yep, the official Epstein findings, which concluded it was a suicide, were so blatantly flawed that CBS decided to do a deep dive into that previously evidence, finding an investigation that was so flawed that, at this point, the question isn’t what investigators did incorrectly but rather what they got right.
First, there were the mistakes made by the prison staff in the seven hour gap between when Epstein’s body was first discovered at 6:34 AM and the arrival of the FBI agents at 1:35 PM, where they found the cell to be cluttered, with items moved around and the body already removed, making it impossible to determine how and when he died. Photos were lacking in evidence markers. None of that is standard procedure. Beyond that, there are inconsistencies with what is shown in these photo vs the official report. For example, items like medications, a sleep apnea mask, and at least one piece of fabric tied into a noose appeared in different placed over the course of 90 minutes while a photographer from the medical examiner’s office was documenting the scene. It’s also rather notable that the first of the 90 photos reviewed by CBS was taken at 9:34 am, three hours after Epstein’s body was found. “In those photographs, it was obvious that things were moved around,” according to New York Police Department detective Herman Weisberg. “It definitely appeared to me that the scene was, for lack of a better term, staged a bit.”
Not that things got better once the FBI arrived. Instead, “the FBI literally has all of the best tools. I mean, spared no expense. They have every tool you can imagine. And they used none of it as far as we can tell,” according to Nick Barreiro, a former police detective and an FBI-trained member of the Digital Imaging and Video Recovery Team. “How are there not way more people pointing out the absurdity of this?” Barreiro went on to describe “evidence photography 101” mistakes by the FBI that include photographing scenes in a progression that goes from a wide shot to close-ups, with markers identifying evidence. There’s also no indication in the official reports that the FBI conducted any sort of DNA or fingerprint sweeps.
Oh, but it gets so much worse. Because it appears investigators screwed up the crime scene so badly that were never able to determine which strip of fabric would actually found around his neck. Beyond that, some of the photos are literally taken from a completely different cell. At least that’s what these analysts inferred from the photos where the floor seemed to have different tiles. These pictures show a defibrillator and another strip of orange cloth tied into a noose-like shape, which is visibly different from the noose hanging from Epstein’s bed frame. Why they would have wanted to take photos from a different cell remains unclear but it appears there were two sets of fabric nooses ultimately photographed. One from Epstein’s cell and another from a different cell.
And then there’s the discrepancy with what is shown in the photos vs what we were told about the positions Epstein’s body was in when he was found. We are told he was found with the noose around his neck and his rear elevated up above the floor. But based on the noose shown in the photo, Epstein’s rear would have been sitting on the edge of the bed instead of hovering about the floor. In other words, the visual evidence contradicts the official report. The evidence is so lacking that the official report give no indication of where the noose was found and only gives a rendering of a noose but notes in the report that “the noose depicted is not the ligature Epstein used to kill himself.” Notably, emergency medical technicians wrote in their report that the staff they interacted with could not say when Epstein was last seen alive or describe how he “was found in [the] jail cell other than to say ‘we found him on the ground.’ ”
It also sounds like barely any eyewitnesses were even interviewed. 54 people where questions before the final report was issued, but that only included three inmates from Epstein’s tier of the jail despite other inmates being present their on the night of his death. At least one staffer who arrived shortly after his body was found was never interviewed at all and almost none of the visitors he had in the days leading up to his death were ever interviewed, including one of his lawyers who met with him just 9 days earlier. This lawyer expressed skepticism that Epstein killed himself based on his professed desire to contest his case during their meeting.
The two guards directly responsible for overseeing that tier of the jail, Michael Thomas and Tova Noel, weren’t interviewed by investigators for nearly two years, and that only happened after prosecutors dropped charges of falsifying records related to mandatory checks on Epstein and after falling asleep on the job. Recall how Thomas and Noel were facing prosecution in the months after Epstein’s death and offered a plea deal but ultimately rejected that deal. It looks like that was the right move for them, with the charges ultimately being dropped in exchange for their testimonies.
Adding to the oddness of who was ultimately interviewed is that two of the three interview inmates were in the cells directly across Epstein’s cell. They describe seeing Michael Thomas, the guard who first found Epstein, entering Epstein’s cell and performing CPR. Except photos of the jail tier show cell windows covered by paper that would have obscured any view outside their cells. It’s unclear if those cell windows were papered over before or after Epstein’s death.
That’s the wildly unprofessional picture that emerged from CBS’s retrospective comparison of the publicly released evidence with the official findings. It’s not just that the official findings are contradicted by the released evidence. The investigation was fundamentally corrupt.
And that evidence of high level investigative corruption brings us to a second very interesting update we just got on the ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to somehow turn Ghislaine Maxwell into a witness who can provide President Trump with the alibi he’s clearly seeking: the minimal security prison where Maxwell was just transferred is now operating under a highly unusual regime of enforced silence. Inmates and staff are under strict orders to not say anything to anyone regarding anything at all about Maxwell. And it’s not just an idle threat. We are told that one inmate, who was just there for a short stay at the minimum security prison, made the mistake of mentioning Maxwell to journalist and was soon sent to a maximum security prison in Houston.
According to Sam Mangel, a former inmate turned prison consultant for high-profile names like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, he’s never seen anything like this before. Although Mangel notes that, if Maxwell is cooperating with investigators, they may have had no choice but to transfer he to a minimum security facility because even the low security prison she was being held at posed an elevated risk to her safety once she became a cooperating witness in this case. It’s an interesting interpretation of the situation since it implies that Maxwell’s life is at an elevated risk because of her cooperation. It’s not a particularly surprising assessment, but it is rather ironic given the widespread suspicion that Maxwell may have been moved to a minimum security facility precisely to create the conditions that might lead to another ‘suicide’. Mangel now predict Maxwell will receive a pardon or some sort of clemency eventually.
It’s also rather notable that Maxwell is on record stating that she doesn’t think Epstein killed himself. On the one hand, that’s probably not the answer the Trump administration wants to hear from her. On the other hand, that might be the answer she feels she needs to give in order to minimize the chances she ‘decides to kill herself’ too.
Those are the sad updates we’ve recently received. Not particularly shocking updates at this point. On the contrary, it would almost be a shock if this story didn’t somehow get worse and somehow more corrupt. It’s that kind of story:
““When they go into a prison. anybody of that type of stature or fame, inmates tend to be very curious. They want to almost live vicariously through them. And many of the staff tend to be very deferential to them because they understand who they are and who their friends might be. In this case with Ms. Maxwell, it is completely different. They were warned, the inmates and the staff were warned prior to her coming in that under no circumstances are they to disclose anything that happens with her or to her or surrounding her during her time at at Bryan.””
They were warned. Keep you mouth shut. Don’t talk to anyone about anything. That was the warning delivered to both staff and inmates at Bryan Federal Prison Camp, the minimal security prison in Texas where Ghislaine Maxwell was recently mysteriously transferred. According to prison consultant Sam Mangel, these weren’t idle threats. One inmate apparently said something about Maxwell to a journalist and was promptly whisked off to the Houston Federal Detention Center, a maximum security facility. Everyone is reportedly afraid, and for good reason it appears:
And when it comes to the highly unusual decision to allow someone with a sex crime conviction to be transferred to a minimum security prison, as Mangel notes, it would appear that decision by prison officials to make that move was mandated from someone “well above their heads”. Beyond that, Mangel sees the move as effectively necessary once Maxwell started cooperating if she was going to be kept safe and alive. That’s also part of the context to keep in mind in this transfer should Maxwell experience some sort of untimely fate. If there’s a legitimate case to be made for this transfer, it’s predicated on keeping Maxwell safe:
And that apparent decision to transfer Maxwell, ostensibly to keep her safe as she cooperates with investigators, is why Mangel is among those who suspect a pardon or some form of clemency is a real possibility:
And that report about both the unprecedented intimidation of both staff and inmates brings us to the latest update on the investigation into Epstein’s death. An update from that was apparently prompted after the release of the official investigative findings were filled with so many contradictions that CBS decided to take another look the evidence already publicly released. And, lo and behold, they found one major investigative ‘mistake’ after another after another. An avalanche of ‘mistakes’ that effectively made it impossible for investigators to determine what actually happened:
““The FBI literally has all of the best tools. I mean, spared no expense. They have every tool you can imagine. And they used none of it as far as we can tell,” forensic analyst Nick Barreiro said after reviewing the photos, many of which have never been published. “How are there not way more people pointing out the absurdity of this?””
How are there not more people pointing out the absurdities of the investigation. That was forensic analyst Nick Barreiro’s assessment, which was based, in part, on photos that have never been published. Which might explain, in part, the relative lack of outcry over the absurdities...some of the most absurd information was never publicly released. In other words, it’s worse than it looks. And it looks really bad, especially after the release of surveillance video the night Epstein died. So bad that CBS News apparently decided to take another look at this collection of photos that were previously obtained by 60 Minutes, and discovering one investigative ‘lapse in procedure’ after another by federal investigators:
But it’s not just the FBI who was making all these mistakes. Photographic evidence shows a crime scene in disarray in the seven hour gap between when Epstein’s body was first discovered and the arrival of FBI agents. Recall how the handling of Epstein’s body included removing the body from the cell and taking it to the jail infirmary before transferring it to the hospital. Plenty of opportunities for critical evidence to be lost. But it’s not just that evidence was lost or mishandled at the crime scene. The staff apparently could not say how he was found in the jail cell other than to say ‘we found him on the ground’. Items were moved around the cell and inconsistent with how it was described in the official report. And note how the first photo wasn’t taken until 9:34 am, three hours after his body was found. As former New York Police Department detective Herman Weisberg put it, “It definitely appeared to me that the scene was, for lack of a better term, staged a bit”:
But things didn’t get better after the FBI arrived. It was just more ‘mistakes’. Like photographing scenes in a progression that goes from a wide shot to close-ups. Or evidence markers. That didn’t happen. The FBI collected unusable evidence:
The crime scene was so tampered with that investigators were never able to determine which strip of bedsheet was around his neck when he died. But it gets worse. Because the strip of bedsheet that investigators apparently initially believed was used to hang himself wouldn’t have been long enough to physically allow Epstein to hang himself in the position he was reportedly found. Beyond that, some of the photos of the crime scene appear to be a completely different cell. But a different cell with a defibrillator and another strip of orange cloth tied into a noose-like shape. A completely separate cell was used to stage some of these photos! How is that not evidence of a cover up?
And then we get to the lack of any DNA or fingerprint tests. One more inexplicable ‘mistake’. The kind of ‘mistake’ that might be characterized as an inconvenient reason for public skepticism. Of course, if Epstein was murdered, not checking for DNA or fingerprints would be an exceedingly convenient ‘mistake’ for those who executed the murder and don’t want it revealed:
And then we get to the ‘mistakes’ involving the witness interviews. Or lack of interviews. Why were only three other prisoners in Epstein’s tier interviewed, but not the rest? Or what about the staffer who arrived at Epstein’s cell shortly after his body was found? Or nearly ALL of the visitors in the days leading up to his death? And photos of the cells of the prisoners who were interviewed had papers obscuring their windows, making it unclear if they even could have seen what they claimed to have witnessed. So almost all the witnesses aren’t ever interviewed at all, and the handful of witnesses who were interviewed potentially had their views obscured on the night of Epstein’s death:
And then we get to the hapless handling of the staff interviews, with nearly two years passing before Tover Noel and Michael Thomas were even interviewed at all. And those interviews only happened as part of a deal that saw prosecutors drop all charges against them over falsifying the records of their welfare checks that evening. Other staffers with first-hand knowledge were never interviewed at all. So the eye-witness testimony from the staff was apparently limited to the two guards who were facing possible prosecutions but somehow got those charges dropped:
Even Epstein’s lawyer who visited him just nine days before his death wasn’t interviewed. And it happens to be the case that this lawyer doesn’t think Epstein killed himself based on his interactions with Epstein and the fact that Epstein was eager to fight his case. Which is another detail to keep in mind when it comes to a motive for killing Epstein: he was planning on fighting his case, which is the kind legal strategy that could have been a potential complication for various interested parties...including the federal government. After all, any defense of Epstein would likely include all sorts of new details involving the sweetheart deal he originally worked out with federal prosecutors and all of the circumstantial evidence that Epstein was operating in coordination with intelligence agencies. Just issuing a guilty plea may have been better for Epstein’s health:
Despite all of these glaring investigative lapses, there are still those defending the investigation, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, who makes the very interesting observation that a conspiracy to kill Epstein would have been extremely complicated and involved a large number of people. Which would have been a decent defense if this investigation didn’t look like it was staged and intentionally botched in a manner that ensured hardly anyone was interviewed and most of the evidence seemingly staged or never collected in the first place:
Finally, it’s worth noting this very interesting detail when it comes to the still-developing sweetheart deal that is seemingly being worked out with Ghislaine Maxwell: She doesn’t believe it was a suicide. On the one hand, if Maxwell is trying to please the Trump administration in the hopes of getting some sort of pardon, refuting the idea that Epstein killed himself is probably a complication. But on the other hand, it’s hard to think of someone more at risk of ‘accidentally committing suicide’ than Ghislaine Maxwell at this point:
Will Ghislaine end up changing her mind about the suicide question before this is all over? We’ll see, but it may not be necessary for a pardon. In the end, if Maxwell gets a presidential pardon, it will presumably be in exchange for some sort of testimony that exonerates President Trump from his involvement over Epstein’s crimes. The crime of bumping off Epstein and covering it up as a ‘suicide’ is more or less already taken care of at this point.
It’s been an update avalanche for the Epstein story in recent days. Trove upon trove. Horrible new detail upon horrible new detail. The already corrupt and sordid picture left even more corrupt and sordid. New details raising more questions. The kind of questions that add a disturbing new level of clarity to sick situation just by virtue of us having to ask them. Questions that are increasingly focused on the nature of President Trump’s history with not only the initial investigation into Epstein that led up to the federal government’s 2008 sweetheart deal, but also questions about Trump’s history with one of the central figures in this story: Virginia Giuffre. And that’s on top of all the other questions raised by the email troves.
The update deluge actually started weeks before the release of the email troves, including a number of updates obtained through the Giuffre’s posthumously published memoir that came out this year following her mysterious death back in April. The other mysterious ‘suicide’ in this story. Recall how Giuffre wasn’t just the star witness in the case against Epstein. She was recruited by Epstein while she was working at Mar-a-Lago. And just months into Trump’s second term, Giuffre ends up dead after a car crash with a bus in Australia that sends her to the hospital with injuries that include her kidneys. Giuffe posts on social media photos of her bruised face and shares that she was told she has renal failure and just days to live, although her family later clarified that the message from the doctors was that she would have just days to live if she left the hospital. Authorities contradict all this and claim she had just minor injuries. Several weeks later, first responders are called to her residence for an unresponsive adult. Her death is declared a suicide and that’s how it’s been reported ever since. No information on how she died has been released and the coroner’s reports was potentially embargoed for two years. It was a ‘suicide’ that was, at a minimum, highly on brand for the Epstein saga.
A highly tragic suicide, but on brand. And also potentially highly convenient to President Trump, as the latest email trove makes clear. Because amid the 23,000+ emails sent and received by Jeffrey Epstein was a number of highly interesting exchanges that raise all sorts of questions about the well known falling out between Trump and Epstein over Epstein ‘taking’ Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago. Starting with an email between Epstein and Maxwell in 2011 where Epstein writes, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. Virginia spent hours at my house with him „ he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.” Maxwell replies “I have been thinking about that.”
There’s a lot packed in that exchange. Epstein used the phrase “the dog that didn’t bark” in reference Trump not coming up once with the “police chief, etc” despite spending hours with Virginia [Giuffre] at Epstein’s house. The “dog that didn’t bark” phrase is a reference to a Sherlock Holmes story — where the silence of a guard dog during a murder leads to the logical conclusion that the dog knew the murderer — used by Epstein 2011, a couple of years after he was released from jail as part of his sweetheart deal following an investigation that included information provided by Giuffre. It’s not hard to interpret that an observation by Epstein that it was odd how Trump didn’t come up in the investigation and prosecution he went through, especially in light of Trump spending hours with Virginia at Epstein’s house. Epstein suspected Trump was somehow being left out of the investigation for a reason: Trump was secretly a cooperating witness and left out of the investigation as a result. Reading between the lines, that appears to be what Epstein was communicating, with Maxwell concurring.
And it wouldn’t have been a stretch for Epstein to speculate along those lines. Trump and Epstein had a famous falling out, after all. It’s at the heart of Trump’s defense over all things Epstein. Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for ‘taking’ Virginia Giuffre who was then working there at the age of 16. That’s Trump’s story and it’s not in dispute. Trump spending hours of time with Virginia at Epstein’s house, however, was never part of that story. That’s new and very significant.
For starters, Virginia Giuffre herself has stated that she barely knew Trump, hardly spent any time with him, and never saw him engaged in illicit behavior. The claim that she spent hours with Trump at Epstein’s place is kind of the opposite of all that. How do we explain this contradiction in fact? Well, that brings us to another tragic update to this story: Giuffre published a memoir that was just released, posthumously. And in the memoir we learn that Giuffre accuses her father, Sky Roberts, of sexually abusing her starting at the age of 7. She was abused by other men before meeting Epstein. But then she goes on to accuse her father of taking hush money payments from Jeffrey Epstein to keep his silence over Epstein’s abuse of Virginia. Her brother Sky Roberts Jr. backs up her claims, recounting how her father seemed to suddenly come into money and even bought a boat at one point.
But part of what makes that abuse and hush money allegation against her father so significant in light of this new information is the fact that Trump employed her father at Mar-a-Lago and and it was her father who got her the job there at the age of 16. She also claimed it was her father who introduced her to Trump once and he was very nice. That was the extent of their contact, according to Virginia. Now, perhaps that’s the case. Or perhaps the truth is much more sordid and involves hush money. The point being that claims of Trump’s involvement with Epstein could have jeopardized her father, especially if hush money payments from Trump to her father were involved. Virginia’s death means we’re forced to speculate about this, but a scenario involving Trump hush money that includes Virginia dropping him from her claims would be in line with the revelation in the 2011 email that Trump spent hours with Virginia at Epstein’s home. Especially with investigators seemingly entirely uninterested in pursuing anything against Trump.
Another detail to keep in mind that was revealed back in 2022 is that Giuffre signed a $500,000 agreement with Epstein in 2009, the year he was released from prison, to drop her case without any admission of liability or fault. It’s not hard to see why Virginia accepted the deal. She was a trafficked young woman trying to pick up the pieces of her life and her abuser gets out of prison on a federal sweetheart deal.
But what about the whole role Trump seeming played in that initial investigation of Epstein? Is this some sort of exculpatory revelation? That was how House Speaker Mike Johnson spun it back in September when he suggested to reporters that Trump was the hero of this story and key government witness. Well, as Josh Marshall observed back in September, while a scenario involving Trump playing a role in that investigation, perhaps even providing the information needed to start the investigation in the first place, does appear to fit the known facts, the broader picture that emerges from those known facts paint Trump as anything but a concerned citizen. On the contrary, the picture that emerges is one where Trump and Epstein found themselves in a dispute over a real estate deal that became such a big source of poison for their bro-mance that the two were looking at mutually taking each other down. In particular, after Epstein shared with Trump how he was bidding on a property and Trump suddenly swooped in a put a much higher bid, it was Epstein who was considering taking Trump to court over the deal, which he knew could threaten to reveal a money-laundering operation with a Russian oligarch who he suspected was ultimately the source of the money Trump used to put in a much higher bid. And it was right around this time that federal investigators got a tip about Epstein’s sex trafficking. In other words, the reason Trump was ‘the dog that didn’t bark’ and never came up in conversation with investigators is that he was one of the key cooperating witnesses, albeit a secret one. And while Mike Johnson might have tried to spin that as a heroic act, the available evidence suggests it was two scumbag friends who had a falling out.
It’s that scumbag-friendship-gone-sour reality that brings us to another very intriguing string of statements made by Epstein starting in Trump’s first term in office. Emails where Epstein shares how he views Trump as the most deranged and evil person he’s ever met. And dangerous. In fact, in one exchange from December 2018, after the 2018 mid-terms when the Democrats retook control of the House, Epstein warns his correspondent to convey a warning to his Democratic friends that , “tightening the noose too slowly, risks a very bad situation. . Gambino was never the commander in chief there was little gambino could do as the walls closed in. not so with this maniac.”
December 2018 also happened to be a month after the Miami Herald’s blockbuster reporting on the Epstein story that ultimately resulted in federal investigators reopening the case. “It will all blow over! They’re really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that...!” one unidentified person wrote to Epstein that month. “yes thx,” Epstein replied. “its wild. because i am the one able to take him down.” That ‘take down’ obviously never happened. On July 6, 2019, seven months after that ‘take down’ comment, Epstein is arrested and sent to prison, only to end up dead in a ‘suicide’ a little over a month later. A ‘suicide’ that, at this point, has all the hallmarks of a murder and coverup. A rather shoddy coverup.
That’s all part of the sordid context of the new troves of documents and the damning statements found within. Statements that don’t just confirm what we already knew — that Trump was well aware of Epstein’s illicit lifestyle — but now raise major questions about the nature of Trump’s relationship with the Giuffres, both Virginia and her father. Along with new question regarding the preposterous ‘suicide’ story we’ve been given from federal investigators. Was President Trump made aware of Epstein’s comments in December 2018 about how he would be the one to ‘take down’ is former friend? And what about the still mysterious death of Virginia Giuffre months into Trump’s second term? We don’t have those answers. But we have a lot more circumstantial evidence pointing in some very dark directions.
Ok, first, here’s a quick look at a report from 2022 with some background info that is now extra relevant in the context of the 2011 email where Epstein and Maxwell agree that Trump of course ‘knew about the girls’ despite mysteriously not ‘barking’. Along with questions of whether or not the Giuffre family ever took hush money from Trump in addition to Epstein. As we learned in 2022, it turns out Virginia Giuffre ended up taking a $500,000 in 2009 to drop her case without any admission of guilt, which would be right around the time Epstein was released from prison as part of his federal sweetheart deal:
A secret 2009 settlement between Epstein and Giuffre. It’s the kind of detail that gives us a strong indication of the role Giuffre played in that initial investigation of Epstein. And as we can see in the following story about some of the details that have come out in Giuffre’s posthumously published memoir, that wasn’t the only payoffs Epstein was making to secure silence. Not only did her own father start sexually abusing her at a young age, _but she suspects he too took playoffs from Epstein. And her brother backs her up on both accounts:
“Giuffre recounts in the memoir, “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice,” that Epstein showed her a photo of her younger brother, then in middle school, and told her to keep quiet about “what goes on in this house.” She also suggested in her book that her father may have taken money from Epstein after he began abusing her. ”
A second secret payoff to buy silence. This time with her own father being the one taking the money. And also being the one first start abusing her at the age of 7. And while Virginia may have had direct evidence of this alleged payoff, her brother agrees that their father seemed to suddenly experience financial windfalls while they were growing up:
And that depressing and somewhat shocking update to this horrible story brings us to the politically devastating slew of updates we got in the Epstein case following the release of 23,000 emails written by Epstein that was handed over to the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee by the Epstein estate. Including the update in a 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell about how Donald Trump was the ‘dog that didn’t bark’ despite the ‘hours’ Trump spent at Epstein’s house with Virginia Giuffre:
“The disclosures seemed designed to raise new questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about what knowledge he may have had regarding what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican businessman-turned-politician has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.”
Not only is President Trump completely innocent of any Epstein-related crimes but he had no idea it was happening. That’s long been the narrative coming from the Trump’s team of spin doctors whenever this topic comes up. A narrative directly contradicted by the 23,000 documents just released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Along with additional 20,000 pages subsequently released by the House Republicans. The world just got two new troves of Epstein-related material. Fascinatingly, both troves came from the Epstein estate. As we’ve seen, federal prosecutors have been extraordinarily lenient when it comes to the handling of estate in the wake of Epstein’s death, leaving the executors hundreds of millions of dollars in assets to be used at their discretion in keeping with Epstein’s will. A will crafted just days before his ‘suicide’. In addition, while Mark Epstein wanted to file a wrongful death lawsuit in response to his brother’s death, which he saw as a “slam dunk” case, that suit never happened thanks to the decision of the estate not to pursue it. The nature of the Epstein estate’s relationship with the federal government is one of the big remaining mysteries in this story and it’s that same estate that provided both of these email batches:
As we’ve seen, part of what makes the idea that President Trump had no idea about Epstein’s under-age sex-trafficking life-style is the fact that he has simultaneously attempted to deflate this story by emphasizing how he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because Epstein was “taking people who worked for me,” most notably Virginia Giuffre. As many have observed, it’s rather difficult to get angry about Epstein “taking” Trump’s employees like Virginia Giuffre while simultaneously not knowing anything about Epstein’s sex crimes. What did he think Epstein was hiring her for? And those contradicting claims from Trump bring us to the damning statement found in a 2019 email from Epstein to Michael Wolff about how “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.” It’s hard to argue with Epstein’s logic. Of course Trump knew:
But then we get to the April 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell where Epstein writes, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. Virginia spent hours at my house with him „ he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.” That sure looks like Epstein is observing how Trump’s name never came up during the investigation that started back in 2006 and resulted in that 2008 sweetheart deal, which is all the more notable given the hours Trump spent with Giuffre at Epstein’s house. Giuffre, of course, settled with Epstein in 2009, which is a reminder that her statements would have very much been part of the initial investigation into Epstein. So Epstein and Maxwell know Trump spent hours with Giuffre and that her statements were going to be integral to the investigation he just went through, and yet somehow Trump’s name never came up. Yeah, it’s suspicious:
But what about Giuffre’s long insistence that she hadn’t been victimized by Trump and, in fact, only met him once. It’s a claim she made in her memoir, after all. It’s certainly a contradictory set of facts. But the reality is that, at this point, the private communications between Epstein and Maxwell where they confirm Trump spent hours with Giuffre are probably a lot more credible than the public statements made by someone in Giuffre’s highly vulnerable position. But then there’s the fact that it was her father who first got her the job at Mar-a-Lago and who introduced her to Trump. The same father she posthumously accused in her memoir of molesting her and accepting hush money from Epstein. So given the multiple payoffs for silence in to the Giuffre family from Epstein, we have to ask if there was some kind of payoff from Trump too. Or perhaps a threat of some sort. Might that explain her laudatory statements about Trump?
It’s those questions swirling around the breakup of the Trump/Epstein ‘broship’ over Epstein’s ‘stealing’ of Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago, the nature Trump’s relationship with both Virginia and her father, and the ‘dog that didn’t bark’ make this a good time to take a look at a post by Josh Marshall from just over two months ago, written after House Speaker Mike Johnson made a very interesting assertion to journalists: according to Johnson, President Trump was actually the secret hero in the story. The guy who tipped off the FBI about Epstein’s crimes. And as Marshall notes, while the facts of the case point towards some very non-heroic actions on Trump’s part, there is a grain of truth to this narrative. That grain being the reality that a dispute between Trump and Epstein over a real estate deal really did poison their relationship to the point where Epstein was threatening to tip off investigators about the money-laundering he suspected Trump was involved with and Trump got ahead of him by tipping off the FBI. Which would be the kind of scenario that might lead to a ‘dog’ (the investigation) not ‘barking’ about Donald Trump’s extensive history with Epstein’s sex trafficking empire:
“Wolff said that Epstein suspected that Trump was the guy who ratted him out to the authorities. So maybe some version of Johnson’s claim isn’t that far-fetched. But of course this isn’t actually exonerating at all. In fact, it implicates Trump about as badly as anything we’ve heard to date. You can’t tell what you don’t know. Trump was in a position to rat out Epstein because he knew all about his operation and had for years. They were close carousing buddies for years, partying and trying to one-up each other, competing to bed young women. Whether that also included girls under 18 for Trump we don’t know for certain. But we have abundant evidence about their carousing and bro-one-upsmanship with women just over 18. Even if he never touched a girl under 18, Trump clearly knew Epstein was. If he’s the one who ratted Epstein out to the authorities leading to his 2008 plea deal, that only confirms his knowledge more clearly.”
Is that the underlying explanation for Epstein’s ‘dog that didn’t bark’ observation? Was Donald Trump the person who tipped off federal authorities about Epstein’s sex trafficking? We’re forced to speculate, but the circumstantial evidence is compelling. Except, as Josh Marshall points out, this is hardly exculpatory. Quite the opposite. The circumstantial evidence strongly points in the direction of Trump tipping off investigators as the final act in an escalating feud between Trump and Epstein over a 2004 real estate deal that led to Epstein threatening to expose Trump’s involvement in a money-laundering scheme:
It’s hard to ignore the alignment of facts with the scenario Josh Marshall is describing. And alignment of fact that now includes the “dog that didn’t bark” comment. The more we learn, the more it really does appear that Trump and Epstein were so close they were in a position to mutually take each other down. Trump just got there first. Which only makes the “I am the one able to take him down” comments also found in these emails all the more interesting:
“Epstein, in a shorthand and typo-ridden response, said, “recall ive told you „ I have met some very bad people „ none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.. so yes- dangerous.””
Epstein wasn’t holding back in his correspondences. Even after Donald Trump took office. Here he was telling Larry Summers how Trump was the worst person he ever met. But not just bad. Dirty too, as Epstein share with his friend Kathryn Ruemmler and former Obama administration White House counsel in 2018. Epstein was saying some pretty remarkable stuff in the years leading up to his arrest and ‘suicide’:
In fact, Epstein was even telling a New York Times reporter in early January of 2017, weeks before Trump took office, that “Donald is f–cking crazy.” Not only was Epstein talking to people, but plenty were apparently interested in what he had to say. And why not? Epstein probably knew the real Trump better than almost anyone else on the planet at that point:
Then there’s the “borderline insane” comment Epstein made in December 2018 following the reopening of the federal investigation in the wake of new Miami Herald reporting that suddenly rekindle public interest in the story. Epstein was basically warning that Trump might do something “dangerous” if the Democrats take a “Tightening the noose too slowly” approach to Trump. Keep in mind that the Democrats had just retaken control of the House in the 2018 mid-terms a month earlier, which is presumably the context of the comments. And, of course, as we saw with Trump’s insurrectionary attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Epstein was entirely correct. Trump really did do something incredibly dangerous when backed into a corner:
Finally, there’s the “I am the one able to take him down” comment made in December of 2018 following that Miami Herald reporting. Interestingly, the unnamed person Epstein was corresponding with when he made those comments suggested “It will all blow over! They’re really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that...!” Which raises an obvious question: did President Trump agree with that? Did he agree the reopening of the Epstein investigation (by his own DOJ) was part of some sort of attempt to ‘take down Trump’? And did he also agree that Epstein was the one who could ‘take him down’? Because if so, that’s some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence to throw onto the giant pile of suspicious facts surrounding the ‘suicide’ and ‘investigation’ that followed:
And as we’ve seen, a ‘take down’ did indeed transpire not long after Epstein made those comments. A pretty epic take down at that. At least, if a blatant murder and shoddy in-your-face cover up can be interpreted as epic. It’s epically in-our-faces at a minimum. All the more so with each wave of revelations.
It’s Epstein update time again. We got updates. A slew of them. But they aren’t exactly confirmable updates. It’s more claims. But wow are they wild. Almost ‘Lyndon LaRouche’-style wild. And almost all of them came from the same source: Historian and biographer Andrew Lownie, the author of a recently published “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York” about Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson.
As we’re going to see, Lownie has no shortage of predictions to make about the fate of Andrew and Fergie now that Andrew’s role in the Epstein story has once again blown up. Starting with Lownie’s public speculation several weeks ago that both Andrew and Fergie were likely to be charged with crimes in the UK. Not sex-trafficking crimes. Public misconduct, corruption, and financial crimes. In Andrew’s case, Lownie was predicting a range of charges related to his time as a trade envoy for the U.K. from 2001 – 2011, when Andrew would take lavish trips paid for by the public that included alleged meeting with prostitutes and questionable personal dealings. Beyond the questionable personal dealings with Jeffrey Epstein. Other official potential crimes committed by Andrew included asking a close-protection officer to dig up personal information on Virginia Giuffre in in 2011.
Lownie was predicting jail for Andrew, calling him “toast”. Fergie, similarly, faces all sorts of potentially investigations related to her charitable work. Or, as Lownie might characterize it, ‘charitable’ work. It sounds like Fergie has a history of speciously raising money for charitable causes. Lownie went on to predict that Andrew will ultimately attempt to find refuse in place like Abu Dhabi. Fergie similarly has an offer from a Bolivian billionaire to live for free there according to Lownie.
Then, a week later, Another report shows up with new revelations from Lownie: Prince Andrew is in so much trouble he’s become a flight risk. Lownie went on to argue that Andrew should have his passport revoked to prevent such a scenario. We then learn that sources told the UK tabloid the Sun that Andrew has already been offered haven by UAE crown prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ). We have no confirmation that such an offer was made, but it’s worth recalling the role MBZ played in offering assistance to the Trump campaign in 2016 as part of an apparent joint offer of assistance by the crown princes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Assistance that involved offered the services of the Israeli private intelligence firm PsyGroup. MBZ is someone who knows how to engage in Machiavellian political maneuvers. He wouldn’t have tried to help Trump win in 2016 if he didn’t feel like he was getting something worth while in return. Which raises the question of what MBZ might be getting in return for giving Andrew a place to hide from the world and who would the party be that’s compensating him for the effort. It’s not hard to imagine the British royal family would prefer Andrew just goes away somewhere. Is MBZ offering to do Andrew a favor? Or the rest of his family a favor?
But that report also gave us some rather interesting details revealed in emails from Epstein: around the same time Andrew was trying to arrange for dirt to be dug up on Giuffre back in 2011, Epstein himself was bragging to a publicist about how Buckingham Palace would “love it” if they could somehow discredit Giuffre and if they managed to succeed they would get access to royal events “for the rest of our lives”. Epstein goes on to suggest to this publicist that they should “task someone to investigate the girl Virginia Roberts, that has caused the Queen’s son all this agro (sic). I promise you she is a fraud. You and I will be able to go to ascot (sic) for the rest of our lives.” So around the same time Epstein is suggesting people dig up dirt on Giuffre, Prince Andrew tasks a close-protection officer to do exactly that. This is also a good time to recall how 2011 was also the year Epstein and Maxwell exchanged the damning emails about how Donald Trump was the ‘dog that didn’t bark’ in relation to Epstein investigation despite Trump apparently spending hours with Giuffre at Epstein’s house. A lot of people wanted to do something about their ‘Virginia problem’ that year.
And that apparent desired on the part of Epstein to please the British royals brings us to the wildest of Lownie’s updates: Lownie made a post to his Substack account that made two incredible claims. First, Lownie states that a retired FBI agent has come to him with information about the true status of the FBI’s investigation into Epstein’s death. According to this source, internal FBI communications show how the FBI takes it as a fact that Epstein was murdered by a “fellow convict who was brought in to do this.” It’s not speculation. It’s a fact, according to this source. And this source even gave Lownie the name of this inmate and the internal communications, although he has yet to release it over liability reasons. So, if true, Lownie possesses at least some evidence for this claim.
Then we get to the second, even wilder set of assertions by Lownie: not only was Epstein very worried that Andrew and Fergie were going to leak information about his sex trafficking operation to save themselves, but he was increasingly worried the pair were planning on having him killed in jail. Lownie adds that Epstein apparently developed his paranoia of royal assassins based on his years of friendship with Andrew who told Epstein the British royal family has a long history of carrying out extrajudicial killings. Again, this sounds like it could have come from a LaRouche publication.
But it gets wilder: We are then told Epstein was so worried about a hit coming from Andrew and Fergie that he was in the process of trying to get ahead of their plot by arranging for his own hit against them. Yep. That’s the claim. Duel assassination plots. Andrew and Fergie knew too much about his sex-trafficking. It was either Epstein or Andrew and Fergie. Someone had to die and the royal ex-couple got him first, according to Lownie.
We are also told that Epstein went beyond just thinking about a murder plot of his own. He had concrete plans and had even established contact with a notorious sniper in the UK. And then he died. Andrew and Fergie got him first.
So how seriously should we take these claims? Well, for starters, there’s a bit of a mystery around the sourcing for the claims of the assassination plots. When Lownie first made these claims on his Substack account he referred to a single source, described as a former friend of Epstein. But days later, when the Daily Beast reports on the claims, Lownie tells the Daily Beast the claims are based on two sources close to Epstein, one in Paris and one in Palm Beach. Both sources confirm that Epstein was increasingly paranoid about being killed by the royals, but it sounds like only one of the sources was behind the claims that Epstein was arranging for his own hit and even made contact with a UK sniper. It’s not clear why Lownie went from one to two sources although it’s not the kind of discrepancy that necessarily undermines the claims.
But then there’s the question of just how plausible these claims are given the rest of the information we already have about Epstein’s ‘suicide’ and subsequent ‘investigation’. And while it would be nice to assume that these are all just fanciful claims that couldn’t have realistically happened, the sad reality is that NONE of these claims are contradicted by the available evidence. Even the claims about Epstein arranging a hit while being jailed in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of a federal prison. Even that scenario could have happened based on what we already know. It’s already that absurd.
Take the claim that an inmate was brought in to kill Epstein. It’s not like that hasn’t been one of the most obvious scenarios the whole time, with one of the things that makes it feel like an obvious scenario is the fact that investigators apparently refused to consider it. Recall how Mark Epstein claimed that investigators apparently have only considered the possibility that someone entered Epstein’s cell block to kill him, excluding the possibility of a fellow prisoner carrying out the attack.
And the more we’ve learned about the absurd conditions of Epstein’s incarceration and the myriad of ‘mistakes’ that led up to his death, the more plausible the inmate murder scenario gets. Starting with the fact that an attack by his cellmate was initially suspected following Epstein’s ‘suicide attempt’ just a couple of weeks before his death. Although, as we also saw, it wasn’t exactly clear if the cellmate was at fault given that the cameras were completely broken and authorities kept coming up with weird explanations for why they couldn’t provide the footage after the cellmate requested the video as part of their defense. Recall how the July 23, 2019, incident where Epstein was found semi-conscious in a fetal position on the floor of his cell, led to speculation of an attack by his cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, a former cop. Tartaglione’s defense team tried to get access to the security camera footage and even requested on July 25, 2019, that the footage be preserved, but the cameras were apparently malfunctioning. On December 19, 2019, US Attorneys told the judge in the case investigating Tartaglione that the video footage didn’t exist. Then, the next day, jail officials reported they found the video, but it turned out to be a video from a different wing of the prison. We then learn that the FBI determined that “the requested video no longer exists on the backup system and has not since at least August 2019 as a result of technical errors.”
But another part of what makes the inmate scenario an intriguing one is precisely because Epstein was left without a cellmate for very strange reasons on the day of his death. Recall how, following that initial ‘suicide attempt’, Epstein was required to have a cellmate because it was a suspected suicide attempt and so a new cellmate, Efrain Reyes, was transferred to his cell. Reyes was transferred out of the detention center the day before Epstein’s death and no new cellmate was provided. Oh, and then it turns out the broken camera system was also scheduled to be repaired the day before Epstein’s death, but the guard who was going to escort the repair person was about to end their shift so repair person was forced to come back later to fix it. He loses his cellmate AND the camera repairs get delayed hours before he’s found dead. Convenient coincidence upon convenient coincidence.
And then there’s the fact that the two functioning cameras in the SHU didn’t actually cover who was entering and exiting the Epstein’s tier of the SHU. And we only learned this fact from a media investigation which contradicted the official narrative. It is also unclear if the door Epstein’s tier was locked because people are seen entering and exiting while Tova and Thomas are seen nowhere near the door. And only three inmates were interviewed despite the tier housing as many as 14 inmates. Or the ‘missing minute’ right before midnight. And the overall investigation was found to be so corrupt that some of the evidence was literally staged by investigators from a different cell.
And let’s not forget how the two prison guards tasked with overseeing the SHU that evening, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, neglected to conduct the regular welfare checks and falsified the records and had charges initially filed against them in November 2019 but the charges were dropped in 2021. Pretty much no one is getting punished for what was, at best, a cascade of failure.
At the same time, it’s worth keeping in mind that throwing blame for Epstein’s death on an inmate doesn’t necessarily remove blame from the prison staff. Recall how there’s a still unexplained mystery surrounding that ‘missing minute’ of surveillance footage and what it might tell us about who was coming and going from the SHU on the night of Epstein’s death. And as we saw, prior to the recovery of the ‘missing minute’, there was speculation that a Materials Manager who started their shift at 4 PM and normally left right at midnight may have left during that missing minute. And, sure enough, that’s what we discovered after the missing minute was recovered. But that discovery in turn raised questions about who the person was seen also leaving the SHU at 12:05 am, five minutes later. That person has never been explained. There’s no official accounting of this person. Did they perhaps unlock a Epstein’s cell door and maybe another inmate’s cell? We have no idea. But the notion that another inmate was brought in to kill Epstein is simply one of the most plausible scenarios based on the available facts. It’s really a question of whether or not Lownie’s source is feeding real information. The claims are totally plausible.
But what about all of the claims about mutual hitman plots? And, in particular, the claim that Epstein was already in contact with a sniper in the UK? Is that remotely plausible for someone in the SHU of a federal penitentiary? Well, once again, we can’t actually rule that out. The available facts are just too absurd. Recall how Epstein had a meeting with his legal team on August 9, 2019, the day before he was found dead. After returning to his cell from meeting with his lawyers at approximately 7:49 pm, Epstein asks to call his mother (who was long dead at that point) and actually called his Belarussian girlfriend, who is one of the main beneficiaries in a trust he set up the day before that contained $577 million in assets at the time. And then, as we also saw in that devastating CBS report, it was an unmonitored phone call from a shower that phone that unmonitored and intended only for attorney communications. And that unmonitored call had been facilitated by the unit manager, the senior officer in charge. It’s kind of hard to rule out the UK hitman scenario when Epstein was allowed to make unmonitored phone calls like that under the permission of the senior officer in charge. Again, it’s more a matter of whether or not Andrew Lownie can back up these claims.
That’s our utterly absurd string of Epstein updates from Andrew Lownie. On one level, it’s hard to take the mutual hitman scenarios seriously. Especially because it’s a narrative that seemingly puts the blame for Epstein’s assassination on Prince Andrew. Or rather, former-Prince Andrew. He’s just Andrew now. Which brings us to the latest update we received in this story, although this update isn’t based on Andrew Lownie. It’s based on unnamed Buckingham Palace sources allegedly claiming that Andrew has told people he feels he has nothing to live for and is growing concern Andrew might do something drastic. In other words, this narrative about a royal hitman taking out Epstein conveniently pins the blame for that absurd death on someone who is currently expected to commit suicide himself. Or ‘commit suicide’, perhaps. Who knows. It’s that kind of story.
Ok, first, here’s a look at a News National piece for several weeks ago about Andrew Lownie’s predictions of criminal charges, and even jail time, for the ex-royal couple:
“Historian and biographer Andrew Lownie, whose latest tome, “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York” told me: “Andrew is going to be charged with various public offences and misconduct in public office… he’ll probably go to jail. The case against him is pretty clear. He’s absolutely, he’s toast.””
Prince Andrews’s biographer, Andrew Lownie, isn’t holding back on his predictions. Prince Andrew is “toast”, legally speaking, and soon to be charged with a range of offenses and possible jail time. That was Lownie’s assessment following the release of troves of Epstein-related emails that eliminated any remaining uncertainty about whether or not Prince Andrew was one of Virginia Giuffre’s abusers. Including the revelation that Andrew apparently asked a close-protection officer in 2011 to dig up personal information about Giuffre in the hopes of discrediting her. Recall how 2011 was the same year Epstein and Maxwell exchanged that email about how Donald Trump was the ‘dog that didn’t bark’ in the investigation he went through despite the hours Trump spent with Giuffre at Epstein’s home. But it doesn’t sound like Prince Andrew’s crimes are limited to his actions related to Giuffre. As a trade envoy for the U.K. from 2001 – 2011, the prince apparently used his official business as an excuse to spend lavishly, even on prostitutes. Or as Lownie put it, “He won’t go down for sex trafficking...It will be for financial impropriety.” And then Lownie goes on to predict Andrew’s ultimate fate: he’ll flee to the Middle East and live in exile:
And then there’s Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. Like Andrew, it appears Fergie is highly vulnerable to investigations of financial impropriety. And with all of the horrid press swirly around her ex-husband, momentum for these kinds of investigations will only build:
And that warning from Prince Andrew’s biographer brings us to the next warning Andrew Lownie delivered a week later: Prince Andrew is in so much trouble in the UK he’s now a flight risk:
“Andrew Lownie, author of the explosive biography of Andrew and Sarah — ‘Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York’ — exclusively told the Mirror that in his opinion, the new emails make Andrew a “flight risk” and that his passport should be “surrendered” so the former Duke cannot leave the country.”
The walls are closing in and the prince is getting ready to flee while he still can. That appears to be Andrew Lownie’s assessment. And then there’s the unnamed sources claiming Andrew has already been offered a home an Abu Dhabi by the wealthy ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ). It’s worth recalling the still wildly unexplored role MBZ played in offering assistance to the Trump campaign in 2016 as part of an apparent joint offer of assistance by the crown princes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Assistance that involved offered the services of the Israeli private intelligence firm PsyGroup. An offer MBZ presumably didn’t make out of the goodness of his heart. He was expecting to get something in return. Which raises the grimly interesting question of what MBZ might be getting in return for making Prince Andrew this offer, assuming the claims are true:
And then we get to these very interesting communications from Epstein about his conviction that “Buckingham Palace” would “love it” if Virginia Giuffre’s credibility was destroyed. Then he apparently suggests to this publicist that they should task someone to investigate Virginia. Keep in mind, as we just saw, 2011 also would be around the same time Prince Andrew asked a close-protection officer to dig up information on Giuffre:
And that prediction of Prince Andrew fleeing the UK by his biographer brings us to Andrew Lownie’s next apparent set of revelations: Not only does Lownie have a retired FBI agent as a source who claims the FBI is internally treating the scenario of another inmate killing Epstein as fact, but this source even shared that inmate’s name with Lownie. But then Lownie goes on to make what is perhaps the wildest series of claims we’ve heard in the entire Epstein saga: not only did Prince Andrew and Fergie arranged for Epstein’s death, but Epstein himself had been in the process of arranging for his own hit against them first. But he was too late:
“Lownie, a British historian and author, told The Daily Beast Podcast that he has seen “internal FBI correspondence” stating that another inmate murdered Epstein.”
Andrew Lownie isn’t just claiming to have a source at the FBI making these remarkable claims. He claims to have seen internal FBI correspondence where it’s stating that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered by another inmate. They even know the inmate’s names. It’s a claim that is explosive in part because of how much information we’ve already received that aligns with this narrative. Available evidence really does point towards the idea that Epstein was murdered. Whether or not it was another inmate or someone else is far from clear. What is clear is that Epstein almost certainly didn’t kill himself and the investigation into his death is in reality a giant cover up. The kind of coverup that not only included an absurd sequence of ‘suddenly broken cameras’ and ‘missing minutes’, but even included the two corrections officers avoiding all charges despite their refusal to accept a plea agreement and the apparent staging of evidence by investigators. An in-your-face coverup that continues to crumble and get more absurd with each revelation. And now we have an apparent new revelation from a former FBI agent who is talking to Andrew Lownie. A former agent who either recently retired, and there was in a position to know these things, or themselves has sources inside the FBI today. This source even shared with Lownie the name of the prisoner who did the murder. It certainly wouldn’t be a shocking twist to learn an inmate did it. Hardly a twist at all. But if a former FBI agent really is naming names and this is credible, that’s pretty incredible and significant:
And that incredible claim by Andrew Lownie’s alleged former FBI source brings us to the other incredible claim made by a pair of sources to Lownie, one in Paris and another one in Palm Beach. Both claim that not only had Epstein grown paranoid Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson would leak incriminating information about him. They go on to claim that Epstein feared he would be assassinated by the royal ex-couple, with one source claiming Epstein “had been in talks with a notorious U.K. sniper for hire,” weeks before his own death. That’s another incredible claim. Especially because Epstein was in the Manhattan federal penitentiary’s SHU in the five weeks leading up to his ‘suicide’. That’s an incredible place to be in contact with an out-of-country hitman to arrange a hit on Prince Andrew. And yet, when we learn about how Epstein had a meeting with his legal team on August 9, 2019, the day before he was found dead. After returning to his cell from meeting with his lawyers at approximately 7:49 pm, Epstein asks to call his mother (who was long dead at that point) and actually called his Belarussian girlfriend, who is one of the main beneficiaries in a trust he set up the day before that contained $577 million in assets at the time. And then, as we also saw in that devastating CBS report, it was an unmonitored phone call from a shower that is intended only for attorney communications. And that call had been facilitated by the unit manager, the senior officer in charge. So Epstein was able to give his dead mother’s name as a cover to call his Belarussian from a shower phone used only for calls to attorneys. That does actually sound like an environment where he could have talked to a hit man. Kind of amazing, but not impossible. That’s all part of the seemingly preposterous nature of Lownie’s sources’ claims. Almost everything we’ve learned about the circumstances of his short imprisonment and ‘suicide’ and the ‘investigation’ that followed has been utterly preposterous. A call to a UK hitman or a call asking someone to hire a hitman is totally plausible at this point. The question is whether or not these sources are telling the truth:
Now let’s take a look at Andrew Lownie’s Substack post where he makes these claims. It’s just three paragraphs, and describes a situation where if Epstein would have soon had Andrew and Fergie killed had he not died first. They knew too much about his sex trafficking ring.
But we also get the detail that it was apparently Andrew who told Epstein over their many years of friendship how the royal family had a long history of carry out extrajudicial killings. Which is a fascinating detail that, if taken at face value, suggests it was the British royal family that somehow arranged for Epstein to be killed, NOT the US government. And while a wild claim, the notion that the British Royal Family has called in a few hits over the years isn’t exactly unthinkable. And Epstein really did get Andrew and Fergie deeply implicated in some vile business so it’s not implausible he was paranoid about royal wrath. While there’s nothing substantiating any of the claims made by Lownie’s sources, the whole situation around Epstein is already so stupid and absurd we can’t really rule it out either:
“Jeffrey became paranoid that the Palace would kill him. He always believed Prince Philip and the British Royal Family were behind Princess Diana’s death. He told people close to him weeks before he died that he would be the next to be murdered by the royals. He said during the many years he was close to Prince Andrew, he learned the Palace had a long history of carrying out extrajudicial killings.”
Again, while we don’t actually have any real evidence pointing towards a royal assassination plot against Epstein, we can’t really rule it out entirely either. Which only add to the grim context of the following report about the apparent fears of a Prince Andrew ‘suicide’. On the one hand, it’s not inconceivable that Prince Andrew really could take his life should he face a real prospect of prison time. On the other hand, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to just accept ‘suicide’ when we’re talking about kind of world Andrew inhabits:
“One palace insider said: “There is real panic behind the scenes. Andrew is now completely isolated and feels he’s lost everything – his title, his home, his dignity. The family are terrified he might do something drastic. He’s told people he has nothing left to live for.” ”
Prince Andrew has nothing left to live for, according to unnamed palace insiders. It’s not an unimaginable scenario. Although it didn’t sound like these palace insiders were predicting jail for Andrew. More like exile from the rest of society as he lives out the rest of his years a the family’s Sandringham estate. And while we’re also told that there are apparently concerns that Andrew will “shut himself off completely once he’s at Sandringham”, keep in mind that cutting himself off from the rest of society is kind of the point of the move. He’s someone the royals would rather go away at this point:
So is this report true? Are the genuine concerns inside Buckingham Palace that Prince Andrew feels he has nothing left to live for and will do something “drastic”? Like so much in this story, it sounds plausible. Of course, the idea that a lot of people at Buckingham, and elsewhere, would LOVE for Prince Andrew to do something “drastic” is pretty plausible too. Especially if this LaRoucheian narrative takes hold.
Time will tell if this ‘Royal hit’ narrative takes hold. It’s not hard to imagine at least parts of MAGA world eagerly embracing an explanation that absolves President Trump of suspicion. It’ wasn’t the US federal government. No, no. It was Andrew and Fergie and the vast royal assassination team that arranged for this cascade of failures and subsequent coverup by the US federal justice system. It’s a very MAGA-convenient narrative. And convenient for pretty much everyone else involved, with the obvious except of Andrew and Fergie. And there’s one thing that could thoroughly popularize this royal hitman conspiracy theory: a mysterious untimely ‘end’ for Andrew. It’s the kind of situation that probably makes the prospect of life in exile in Dubai sound pretty tempting.
It’s no secret at this point that the FBI’s handling of the DC pipe bombing investigation has been abysmal, especially now that we’ve learned about the long-belated arrested of Brian Cole Jr, the apparent ‘Stop the Steal’ believer who already confessed to the crime. Gross negligence is kind of the FBI’s best explanation at this point.
But it’s worth keeping in mind that the FBI is hardly the only US institution that failed miserably on January 6. There’s the still unexplained series of ‘mistakes’ and ‘misunderstandings’ inside the Pentagon that led to the hours-long delay in deploying the National Guard to a ransacked Capitol.
And let’s not forget about the Secret Service, which showed up repeatedly in an awful light throughout the January 6 investigation, both for what the Secret Service did and didn’t do that day but also in the weeks leading up to the attack. For starters, recall that group of Oath Keepers who were caught on video during the insurrection making their way up the steps of the Capitol amid that angry mob using a tactical “stack” formation. The group included Jessica Watkins. Now recall the many still unresolved questions around the “Quick Reaction Force” (QRF) the Oath Keepers set up to deliver heavy weapons to the Capitol. Jessica Watkins claimed they were to await orders to deliver the weapons...orders she said would come from Trump!. And that wasn’t Watkins’s only remarkable claim that hinted at direct coordination with the Trump administration. There’s also the fact that Watkins is the individual who claimed she had been coordinating with the Secret Service in providing security for VIPs like Roger Stone at that ‘Stop the Steal’ rally that then-President Trump spoke at before the insurrection. Watkins later recanted after the Secret Service denied working with her, but by all accounts she was allowed into the VIP area of the rally before she was later filmed storming the Capitol. So we have some major questions about whether or not the Secret Service was directly coordinating with the Oath Keeper group that was managing that “Quick Reaction Force” of heavy weapons which was fortunately never deployed. Questions unanswered to this day.
But also recall how Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, had a conversation with the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail, Tim Giebels, on January 5, where Giebels expressed his concern about Pence’s safety the next day. And then, on Jan 6, Pence was asked by his Secret Service detail to flee the Capitol during the insurrection, but Pence refused. Getting Pence to flee the Capitol or somehow not be able to certify the vote was the whole strategic point of the insurrection. That’s another key detail on how the events of January 6 ultimately played out. Had Mike Pence followed the advice the head of his Secret Service detail, the insurrection could have very possibly succeeded in delaying the certification of the vote. The ultimate thwarting of all these plans really did come down to Pence refusing to play along. All the pieces were in place to allow the plan to succeed.
Now, in fairness, Mike Pence’s life really was in danger on January 6, so we can’t necessarily attribute corrupt intent to the fact that his Secret Service detail wanted to usher him out of the Capitol. But when we learn about the Secret Service coordination with key actors in this plot, it’s also hard to just dismiss the possibility that at least some elements of the Secret Service were fully aware of what was about to go down that day and were effectively assisting the plot.
And that brings us to a congressional report that was released back on January 6, 2025, by Republican representatives Barry Loudermilk (GA-11) and Thomas Massie (KY-04). Massie has notably turned out to be the biggest GOP thorn in President Trump’s side when it comes to the Epstein scandal this year and the Trump administration’s failed efforts to squash that story. As we’ll see, there’s an Epstein-related tangent to this story, albeit a very indirect one and minor one.
Reps Loudermilk and Massie’s report excoriated the Secret Service for the really incredible security lapse outside the DNC and RNC headquarters. Bomb sniffing canine dogs were sweeping the area repeatedly, within feet of the bombs in some cases, yet they were consistently missed. Kamala Harris and her team also passed within feet of a bomb as she entered the DNC HQ at one point. Pedestrians were even allowed to walk within feet of the bombs after they had been discovered but before they had been safey diffused. And, ultimately, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was prevented from returning to the Capitol to participate in the certification of the electoral vote. Again, when we find Secret Service behaving as if they knew the bombs weren’t a serious threat gross negligence is kind of the best explanation.
Although, as we’ll see, it may have been readily apparent that the bombs weren’t actively set. Because it turns out the kitchen timers on the pipe bombs were simple non-digital timers with up to a one hour time. Keep in mind another detail we were told in that Washington Post report describing the failure of the investigation that came out just a few weeks before Cole’s arrest: The devices were “operable” and had been rigged with gunpowder but their timers had not been set to detonate. So when we learn that the timers could only be set up to an your, that presumably partially explains why the bombs seemed to have never been set in the first place when they were discovered 17 hours later. They were either set and just didn’t go off when the timer was set. Or they were never set, in which case they were purely intended as some sort of message or distraction. Again, as we saw, investigators initially focused on the pipe bombing case precisely because they suspect it was part of a larger plot to serve as a distraction and draw law enforcement away from the Capitol. Which is exactly what happened. As we’ll see, the woman who initially found the pipe bomb told reporters that she panicked when she saw the timer stuck at 20 minutes. So it’s likely that the timer dials were turned to the 20 minute mark but not pushed in or whatever was necessary to start the countdown, which suggests an intent to have the bombs found and elicit an immediate ‘clear the area’ response, drawing law enforcement to the area.
But, again, the ‘bombs as distraction’ plot would only work if the bombs found within the right window of time. Not too soon, not too late. And they really were found in that window. The mob of Trump supporters first broke through the lines of the Capitol Police around 1:30 pm, after all. The discovery of the pipe bombs was kind of perfect in that sense.
Which brings us to the interesting details surrounding the discovery of the first pipe bomb. This would be the pipe bomb in the alley behind the RNC headquarters, which was first discovered by the resident of an adjacent building, Karlin Younger, who was working from home and decided to do her laundry during her lunch break. As Younger describes, the bomb was tucked away next to a garbage bin in the alley where the entrance to the laundry room was located. Not immediately visible but also clearly somewhat visible because she happened to notice it while closing a gate to return to her resident when returning from the laundry room. She immediately ran to inform someone and found a security guard who was standing outside the RNC headquarters.
Now, regarding the remarkable timing of Younger’s discovery of the pipe bomb, it’s important to note that there’s no indication that Younger is somehow tied to MAGA world or this larger plot. Although she does have kind of an interesting background in that she has previously worked for Control Risk, a London-based political risk consulting firm, which included work on counter-terrorism and transnational terrorism. Beyond that, before her work at Control Risk, Younger taught English in China before attending Oxford University to pursue a degree in comparative government. Which sure sounds like a great candidate for an intelligence asset. So that’s an interesting coincidence: the first bomb was discovered by someone with a history of political risk and terrorism analysis and who as the background of a possible intelligence assets. A weirdly thematic professional background, although this is DC. A lot of residents living next to the RNC probably have backgrounds that could be perceived as ‘spooky’. Also keep in mind that people can be hired for private intelligence roles. If Younger happens to be a spook, that doesn’t necessarily mean she was working for a government agency.
At the time, Younger was also doing some national security-related work specifically in the first responder technology space. Younger was working for FirstNet, a telecommunications project for the Department of Commerce that focuses on provided special bandwidth dedicated for first responders. And that brings us to the Epstein-related tangent to this story: recall Carbyne, one of the many technology first Jeffrey Epstein had invested in, which similarly focused on this same kind of service. As we saw, Carbyne’s investors included not only Epstein but also Peter Thiel. In fact, Carbyne’s board of advisors included Palantir employee Trae Stephens, who was a member of the Trump transition team. It was an intriguing company from an intelligence perspective because the service because the service revolved around allowing smartphones to confidently send distress signals to first responders by allowing the service to rapidly scan an area for all of the available modes of telecommunication, (IP/ umts / 2G / 3G /4G / LTE etc.) and choose the best channel to send the signal, so it involved merging civilian telecommunication networks with the emergency infrastructure infrastructure that includes technology for routing, indoor positioning platform, dispatch systems, and monitoring. Adding to the intelligence intrigue is the fact that the company was founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack, himself an Epstein associate. In fact, when FirstNet teamed up with AT&T to build the first dedicated first responder bandwidth service in the US back in 2017, Carbyne hailed it as a breakthrough for their industry. Flash forward to 2025, and it was just announced back in October that Carbyne’s APEX 9–1‑1 call-handling platform was set to be integrated into FirstNet’s infrastructure.
There’s another story tangentially related to Carbyne and FirstNet that’s worth recalling: Carbyne isn’t the only company in this space Thiel has invested in. As we learned back in October 2020, the tail end of the first Trump administration, the Trump administration decided to fast track a no-bid contract the company Rivada to purchase exclusive rights to lease a large chunk of the bandwidth spectrum from the Department of Defense. A no-bid contract for bandwidth that was considered premium real estate in the 5G market. One anonymous senior administration official at the time called it likely “the biggest handoff of economic power to a single entity in history.” Pentagon leaders were openly resisting the proposal, warning that it hadn’t been thoroughly vetted and could have an impact on military readiness. Rivada’s investors happened to include Peter Thiel and Karl Rove. Newt Gingrich was also backing the deal. Rivada also made a bid for the same 2017 contract with FirstNet that was ultimately awarded to AT&T. In other words, Peter Thiel has invested in multiple companies angling to operate in the space of providing exclusive first-responder bandwidth services.
How any of that relates to the pipe bombing case is unclear and it’s very possible there’s no real tie-in at all. But, again, when we consider the fact that the pipe bombs had to be found at the right time — not too soon, not too late — and that’s exactly what happened, it’s more than a little interesting that the person who discovered the first pipe bomb had a history of terror consulting and was working for a federal project with was effectively creating a new industry connecting civilian and emergency responder telecommunications infrastructure that key Trump backers like Peter Thiel (and Jeffrey Epstein) were keenly interested in.
At the same time, if there really was a plan to have someone find the pipe bombs at the ‘right’ time, we can’t rule out the possibility that Younger actually found the first pipe bomb before that ‘right’ time. Maybe they were intended to be found a couple hours later right in the middle of insurrection instead of right before the insurrection, and Younger reduced their intended impact? We can’t say for certain. Still, given that was are told the pipe bomb discoveries really did draw law enforcement away from the Capitol during the insurrection, it’s hard to argue that the bombs weren’t found at just the right time.
That’s all part of the context of the unfolding investigation in Brian Cole Jr: the Secret Service really did fail so spectacularly in just the right way to maximize the distraction factor from the pipe bombs. It was such a spectacular failure that we have to wonder if it wasn’t a success on some level. Which, in turn, would make the FBI’s spectacular failure to seriously investigate this crime a kind of ‘success’ too.
Ok, first, here’s a summary review of the top level findings of that Congressional report issued on January 6, 2025, excoriated the Secret Service for on inexplicable ‘failure’ after another:
“The USSS failed to identify one of the devices during security sweeps at the DNC, resulting in Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s motorcade passing within feet of one of the pipe bombs. At least ten different USSS agents and two canine units came within feet of the pipe bomb before the Vice President-elect’s arrival yet never discovered the device.”
At least ten different USSS agents and two canine units came within feet of the pipe bomb outside the DNC but never discovered it. We’re told these were functional pipe bombs. How do multiple canine units miss something like that? And in case it’s not clear just how close these Secret Service teams got to the pipe bomb during their security sweep, the full report contains a number of pictures (starting on 19) showing the Secret Service teams repeatedly walking within 20 feet of the bomb, including a canine unit. And then, after the bomb is discovered, a standard perimeter wasn’t established. Did the Secret Service have reason to believe the bombs were not set to go off? Keep in mind that, as we’re going to see, the kitchen timers on the bombs could only go up to an hour, so it’s possible the agents immediately concluded the bombs were never set or had reach the countdown without exploding. But, if so, that’s one helluva assumption to make considering the circumstances:
And then there’s the congressional findings regarding the FBI’s claims that some of the cellphone data they were given by cell carriers was “corrupted”. As we saw, one of the most glaring evidentiary trails leading to Cole’s arrest was how his cell phone movement almost perfectly aligned with the known path of the bomber seen on video. So is “corrupted data” the FBI’s alleged excuse for not identify Cole for five years? Because that’s not a valid excuse, according to Congress:
And that’s just the damning headlines in this congressional report. The full report contains plenty of additional damning details. Like the fact that the Secret Service NEVER discovered EITHER of the pipe bombs. The RNC pipe bomb was first found by an RNC security guard at 12:42 PM. It was at that point that US Capitol Police (USCP) deployed three Countersurveillance Units (CSU) to search the area for more devices. One of those teams headed towards the DNC headquarters. It was that USCP team that found the pipe bomb outside the DNC at 1:05 PM. It was a 100% failure to detect both bombs by the Secret Service:
“Vice President-elect Harris remained in the DNC building for over an hour before a
plain-clothes USCP officer discovered the device at approximately 1:05 PM and notified the
USSS.109 Ten minutes later, USSS evacuated Vice President-elect Harris from the DNC building
to her residence.110 As a sitting United States Senator, Vice President-elect Harris was initially
scheduled to return to the Capitol later in the afternoon to participate in the Joint Session;111
however, following the security breach at the Capitol, Vice President-elect Harris did not
return.112″
As we can see, the pipe bombing succeed at keep then-Senator Kamala Harris away from the Capitol for the rest of the day. Fortunately, her vote wasn’t necessary for the certification of the electoral vote, but it did at least partially disrupt the certification process. More importantly, as we saw, part of the reason January 6 investigators were so focused on the pipe bomber was due to a suspicion that they were operating in coordination with a larger plot to draw law enforcement away from the Capitol as the insurrection was unfolding. And as also saw, the pipe bombs did succeed in drawing away law enforcement during that crucial period. The plot worked. And yet, crucially, the plot ONLY worked because of the inexplicable inability of the Secret Service to detect both bombs for over 17 hours, allowing them to be discovered just at the right time, with a resident, Karlin Younger, of the building behind the RNC headquarters finding the first one at roughly 12:42 pm. Seemingly perfect timing, really. The crowd was gathering outside the Capitol but the insurrection had yet to unfold. That’s right when you want to draw law enforcement away. Which raises some interesting questions about how ‘random’ that discovery truly was. As we’ll see, Younger happened to be working on a federal communications project for the Department of Commerce called FirstNet and has a background in counter-terrorism consulting work:
We have both the mystery of why the Secret Service seemingly couldn’t find these bombs despite multiple sweeps with canine bomb sniffing units, coupled with the mystery around the remarkable luck of having a resident of the adjacent building discover the first bomb in the hours leading up to the insurrection. Was there secret coordination going on? If so, that might explain the FBI’s extreme apparent desire to NOT identify the pipe bomber. This is a potentially very serious investigative avenue that’s now been opened up with Cole’s arrest. If he was working with anyone else, that’s an investigation that could go in some very inconvenient directions for the Secret Service and who knows which other law enforcement agencies.
That said, we don’t actually have any indication that the person who discovered the first pipe bomb, Karlin Younger, is tied to any kind of larger plot. Instead, it appears she happened to be working from home that day and stumbled across the pipe bomb while doing her laundry. And as Younger described, the bomb was set to 20 minutes on the dial, although fortunately the dial wasn’t counting down. And as Younger admits, it was also a bit of a coincidence that she happens to have a background in counter-terror consulting before taking her job at the Department of Commerce’s FirstNet telecommunications project:
“Younger, who grew up in Madison’s Bay Creek neighborhood and graduated from West High School in 2002, moved to the nation’s capital about 18 months ago. She’d been working remotely from Madison for the U.S. Dept. of Commerce’s FirstNet project, a communications network dedicated to first responders.”
Karlin Younger was just having a normal day working from home on the Department of Commerce’s FirstNet project on January 6. And then she noticed a strange object next to the garbage that was visibly a bomb set to 20 minutes on the dial. That’s how the pipe bombs were discovered. If Karlin Younger hadn’t made that discovery, we have no idea how long it would have taken the Secret Service to them. And the odds of them not being found in time to serve as a distraction are certainly much lower:
And then we get to what Younger admits was a rather ironic part of her background: after teaching English in China and then enrolling at the University of Oxford in England where she earned a master’s in comparative government, Younger went to work at a political risk consulting firm in a role that involved counter-terror analysis. That sure looks like the kind of background that an intelligence asset might have. But then again, we don’t know:
And now here’s another look at Younger’s account of that day with some additional information on her professional background. A background that includes employment at the London-based Control Risks consulting firm that included work on transnational terrorism:
“The FBI put out a call for information and Younger reached out to them and told them how she found the device.”
It’s rather amazing, but the FBI apparently didn’t know the identity of the person who found the first pipe bomb. It was only after the FBI put out a call for information that Younger reached out and let them know who she was. It’s one more item we can add to the FBI’s incredible list of failures on this story.
Then we get to this detail about Younger’s profession background and prior work on transnational terrorism for the London-based consultancy company Control Risk after teaching English in China and then getting a degree in comparative government at Oxford. We have no idea if she’s an intelligence asset but boy is that a ripe resume for such a position:
But again, we have zero evidence directly tying Younger to any of those broader networks known to be directly involved with the orchestration and planning that led up to January 6. No known MAGA ties. No known conservative ties in general. Plenty of possible intelligence ties, maybe even private intelligence. But not direct ties. In that sense, the questions around the questions around Karlin Younger are a lot like the questions around Brian Cole Jr: if either one was part of the plot, it’s a bigger plot than meets the eye. And the plot we were looking at was already pretty huge.
We haven’t heard much about the investigation of Brian Cole Jr, the alleged DC pipe bomber. Sure, there was all that initial fanfare from the FBI, and then we got the update about Cole’s status as a Trump supporter and, all of sudden, the updates have largely ground to a halt.
Almost, but not entirely. The Wall Street Journal just came out with a report providing an official explanation for how it was that the FBI missed all these compelling clues pointing towards Cole for almost 5 years and then, suddenly, connected the dots. As we saw, the FBI had long pointed to “corrupted” data provided by one of the cell carrier companies and yet, according to a congressional report released back in January, the company insisted that they never provided corrupted data and that the FBI never notified them of any issues in accessing the data. Well, according to this new WSJ report, that cell carrier was T‑Mobile and the FBI now claims that a tech savvy law enforcement officer wrote a computer program to decipher the T‑Mobile data. That was the big revelation insider the FBI. Someone wrote a program to decipher T‑Mobile’s data and, voila, the case was more or less solved once it became clear that Cole’s cellphone aligned closely with the known path of the pipe bomber. Keep in mind that, as we saw, part of what made the FBI so focused on cell phone location data in the first place is the fact that the pipe bomber was seen on video looking down at their phone at one point. So it was extremely obvious that this was crucial evidence. And yet, the FBI apparently never approach T‑Mobile about their difficulties in deciphering the data and ultimately ended up writing their own software to decode it.
And as Marcy Wheeler points out in a recent blog post excerpted below, there’s another rather remarkable aspect of the timing of this investigative revelation: Cole’s arrest came less than a month before the 5 year anniversary of his alleged crimes and, for many of those crimes, there’s a five year statute of limitations. Potentially including the crime of conspiracy. It’s a detail that makes the fact that Cole turned out to be a support of President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” narrative all the more fascinating. Because as Wheeler also observed, it’s rather difficult to conceive of Cole engaging in crime that turned out to be extremely convenient for the insurrectionary plot without some sort of coordination with the insurrectionists. And yet, as Wheeler also notes, it’s impossible to imagine Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and the rest or the corrupt Trump appointees in the Justice Department could ever imagine opening this up to a broader investigation that resulted in the discovery of Cole being part of a larger plot. There’s just no way they’re going to do something like that without losing their jobs. So this case got ‘solved’ at just the last minute to avoid an expiration of the 5 year statute of limitations, and yet all indications are that this Justice Department can’t possibly proceed with the investigation in good faith. Wheeler also points out that the fact that untested software was used to decrypt the T‑Mobile data could, itself, serve in Cole’s defense over questions of whether or not the software accurately rendered the location data.
Wheeler also observes that the opening up of the T‑Mobile location data also allows for all sorts of questions about who Cole may have interacted with during the December 14, 2020, trip to DC where Cole’s credit card was recorded making a purchase at a restaurant near the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters. Questions that Wheeler is confident won’t be asked because, again, no one at the FBI can faithfully engage in an investigation that might reveal a large insurrectionary plot without getting fired.
And that brings us to a very important observation that someone left in a comment to that blog post: 12/14/2020 was a Monday, and as this commenter points out, credit card transaction over the weekend often don’t get recorded on the day of purchase and don’t show up until Monday. And it happens to be the case that a major “Stop the Steal” DC rally took on 12/12/2020, that Saturday. Recall how that was the “Stop the Steal” rally Nick Fuentes led a crowd of Groypers with a “Destroy the GOP!” chant, which was what Fuentes was threatening to do if the Republican Party didn’t fully back Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. Trump did three flyovers of the rally in Marine One. So when we realize that the 12/14/2020 credit card transaction could easily be a 12/12/2020 transaction, the question of who Cole may have been coordinating with becomes impossible to ignore. Granted, the FBI is almost certainly going to ignore this question.
And all of those questions about who Cole may have been working with bring us to some other very interesting details we’ve learned about the alleged pipe bomber. First, according to a Daily Mail report that interviewed his grandmother, worked at the family-owned bail bondsman company Brian Cole Bail Bonds in a data entry role. She described Cole as likely on the autism spectrum with the mind of 16 year old. As she put it, “He’s slow. He may be 30, but he’s got the mind of a 16-year-old. That’s why we’re thinking — What the hell? What’s going on?” She also describes him as a computer nerd who spends all day in the basement of his family home on computer. So the grandmother describes a psychological profile that almost sounds like the perfect patsy for a crime like this: technically proficient but naive and immature. Also keep in mind we could be looking at a 764/Com situation when it comes to Cole’s online friends.
Cole’s grandmother goes on to characterize him as someone who hates both political parties and never votes. Keep in mind that someone who hates both political parties and traditionally never votes is kind of one of President Trump’s target electoral demographics. Except it turns out Cole does vote, and quite reliably according to a report in the New York Post. In fact, while he’s reportedly never voted in a party’s primary election, he did vote in the general elections in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024. So not only does he vote but he’s a pretty reliable voter who even voted in Virginia’s 2017 and 2021 off-year elections.
Then the New York Post report attempts to delve into the available voter contribution data to infer Cole’s political affiliation. The report lists a “Brian Cole” of Lorton, Virginia, who donated a total of $50 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018 and another $50 in 2024, per FEC filings. But this individual listed himself as “not employed,” which doesn’t align with Cole’s employment at the family business.
But there’s another “Brian Cole” in Fairfax, Virginia, with FEC donation records. And this Brian Cole happens to list his employment as “bail bondsman,” which would appear to be a solid hit for either Brian Cole Jr or his father. But, the article notes, the listed employer for this individual is “Mr Bail Inc.” which obviously isn’t the “Brain Cole Bail Bonds” family business. The New York Post article concludes that this can’t be the same person as the suspect.
EXCEPT, it turns out that Mr Bail Inc is a national franchise which happens to have a location at the exact same address as Brian Cole Bain Bonds. Including the same suite number: 4085 Chainbridge Rd Ste 100 Fairfax, VA 22030. In fact, there are at least four bail bond companies at that exact same address: Brian Cole Bail Bonds, Mr. Bail Inc, Break Out Bail Bonds, and Statewide Bonding. And, again, Mr Bail Inc is a nationwide chain with franchises around the US. So we have to ask: was the Cole family operating one of the Mr Bail franchises out of their family office? And maybe some franchises for Statewide Bonding and Break Out Bail Bonds too? Because that seems like a much likelier explanation than the possibility that two separate “Brian Coles” work out of two different bail bonds businesses with the exact same address.
Now, what kind of political contribution did this “Brian Cole” bail bondsman make? A $104.10 on the Republican fundraising platform WinRed in March 2024. Again, we don’t know if this corresponds to Brian Cole Jr or his father Brian Cole Sr. But the available evidence suggests this was one of the two. And, in turn, this only further adds to the evidence that we are looking at someone with an affiliation for Republicans.
So while we haven’t gotten many updates on this story, we did get a few, none of which look great for FBI or Trump administration. Ok, first, here’s a look at Marcy Wheeler’s post on the remarkable timing of this arrest, less than a month before the five year statue of limitations starts becoming a serious complication, but simultaneously opening up all sorts of political complications for the FBI investigators who can’t possibly truly investigate this crime without fear of Trumpian reprisals:
“As noted, DOJ asked for and got an exclusion of the 15-day delay in detention hearing time from the Speedy Trial Act (STA). That’s actually a very big deal, because when DOJ arrested Cole on December 5, the month they had to indict Cole under the STA coincided with the month that existed before the normal 5‑year statute of limitations on most crimes expired.”
Well isn’t that remarkable: it turns out Brian Cole Jr’s arrest came less than a month before the 5‑year statute of limitations on most crimes expired. What a coincidence. And as Marcy Wheeler points out, while some of the charges against Cole have an extended statute of limitations that goes well beyond 5 years, other charges might not, including conspiracy charges. So Cole was arrested charged at basically the last opportunity to charge him for something like a conspiracy, which is supremely ironic since, as Wheeler also points out, there’s no way the Trump appointees running this case are going to want to see Cole seriously investigated for a broader conspiracy now it’s been revealed he’s a “Stop the Steal” Trump supporter:
Then we get to Wheeler’s summary of the report on the government’s claims regarding the alleged reason the FBI failed for so many years to identify Cole from the cellphone location data but then, suddenly last month, connected the dots: we are told T‑Mobile provided the FBI with unreadable data that was only recently made readable by a tech-savvy law-enforcement officer who wrote a new computer program. Amazing if true. How could the FBI not get the required assistance from T‑Mobile to unscramble the data? Don’t forget that the bomber was seen looking down at their phone on video. That T‑Mobile data was obviously absolutely crucial evidence. And as Wheeler warns, the fact that a program written by an investigators was used to assemble the data needed to identify Cole in the first place potentially puts the entire case against him potentially in jeopardy:
And then we get to this very interesting observation regarding the December 14 financial transaction showing Cole making a purchase at a restaurant near where one of the bombs was place. As Wheeler asks, what else might that data reveal? A meeting with someone perhaps? But also keep in mind that the bombs weren’t set to explode at the perfect time. They apparently weren’t set not explode at all and instead just happened to be found by a resident of an adjacent building who was doing her laundry and saw one of the pipe bombs...at 12:40pm, which was pretty much the perfect timing to maximize the effect of drawing law enforcement away from the Capitol right when the insurrection was about to unfold. But Wheeler is correct that it’s rather difficult to imagine Cole did all this on his own:
And that brings us to the important comment to Wheeler’s post, where they point out that December 14, 2020, was a Monday, and credit card transactions over the weekend can often recorded with the following Monday as the transaction date. And guess what took place on December 12, 2020: that was the “Stop the Steal” rally in DC where Nick Fuentes led a crowd of Groypers with the chant “Destroy the GOP!”, which was what Fuentes was threatening to do if the Republican Party didn’t fully back Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. Trump did three flyovers of the rally in Marine One. What are the odds that December 14, credit card transaction wasn’t actually from December 12 when all sorts of other Trump supporters flocked to the area? And if so, what are the odds Cole didn’t have a chat with some like-minded individuals. Keep in mind that, as an African American, he probably would have gotten a lot of attention at a rally like that.
And, of course, all of these questions bring us to the ongoing investigation that’s only grown more intriguing with the revelation of Cole’s apparent belief in the ‘Stop the Steal’ narrative. Was Cole working alone or part of a larger plot? It’s one of the biggest questions looming over this story at this point. Which is part of what makes the claims by Cole’s family members in the follow Daily Mail report so interesting. According to his grandmother, he was an autistic reclusive computer nerd worked at the family’s bail bonds business and spent his time in the basement of the family home. She also claimed he hates both parties and never votes (as we’ll see, he voted frequently). But the most interesting description of Cole is that he’s “slow. He may be 30, but he’s got the mind of a 16-year-old”. That was how his grandmother described him. Which sounds like a profile for someone who is technically proficient but easily manipulated. In other words, the perfect patsy. And given that he spent all day on computers, the question of who may have been pulling his strings looms large:
“But Loretta, his grandmother, said Cole has no party affiliation and never votes.”
He’s so apolitical he never votes. That was the claim for Cole’s grandmother. A claim that, as we’re going to see, is belied by Cole’s voting records that show him voting even in off-year elections.
And then there’s the characterization from Cole’s family members that he’s an autistic recluse and computer nerd who also has the mind of a 16-year-old and probably doesn’t appreciate the magnitude of what we did. In other words, the kind of psychological profile of a great patsy. Technically capable yet not intellectually capable of understanding the implications of his actions. That’s the profile the family is providing. So when we are told that he’s a computer nerd with no social media who spent all his time downstairs alone with his dog, we have to ask: who was Cole communicating with online? Could we be looking at a 764/Com kind of darkweb extremist community situation?
Then we get this important detail regarding when the first bomb was found: the first was found outside the RNC’s office at 12:45 pm, with the DNC pipe bomb only being found a half hour later. Recall how investigators initially focused on the pipe bomb investigation, in part, due to a suspicion that the pipe bomb could have been part of a broader plot to draw law enforcement away from the Capitol right as the insurrection was set to unfold, which is what happened. So, again, it’s important to note the remarkable coincidence that these pipe bombs were completely missed by Secret Service detail the entire morning of January 6 and were only found after the rally at the Ellipse had ended and the pro-Trump crowd began descending on the area outside the Capitol. Intentional or not, the timing was kind of perfect. And that perfect timing couldn’t have happened without the Secret Service repeatedly missing the pipe bomb in their earlier sweeps:
Then there’s all of details about the kind of work Cole did with the family bail bonding business. He was a data entry clerk and receptionist:
And that brings us to the following report in the New York Post that contains some rather interesting information about a “Brian Cole” who donated $104 to conservative groups in 2024 and listed his occupation as bail bondsman, Cole’s occupation. As we’ll see, this “Brian Cole” happened to list their employer as “Mr Bail Inc”. And while the article goes on to conclude that this couldn’t be a match to the pipe bomber because that’s obviously not the same company as the family-owned “Brian Cole Bail Bonds”, it turns out the two companies do share the exact same address, including the same suite number: 4085 Chainbridge Rd Ste 100 Fairfax, VA 22030.
As the article also notes, while Brian Cole Jr has no history of vote in any party primaries, he is a steady general election voter, having voted in 2016, 2017. 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024. Yes, he even voted in the off-year elections of 2017 and 2021. So while his grandmother insisted that he never even votes, it appears he’s for more likely to vote than the average voter:
“Cole did not appear to have registered with either party in Virginia and did not vote in primary races — but did cast ballots in general elections in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024. His father’s party identity is unknown but he was once defended by high-profile civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who repped George Floyd’s family.”
Brian Cole Jr may have hated both political parties. But he clearly wasn’t apolitical. Not only did he vote in the presidential elections and mid-terms, but he even voted in Virginia’s off-year elections of 2017 and 2021. Which brings us to the mystery over the “Brian Cole” political donation public records from 2024. As we can see, a “Brian Cole” who donated $50 to Democrats, but this individual lists himself as “not employed” and living in Lorton, Virginia. And we know the suspect lived with his parents in Woodbridge, so that doesn’t sound like a match. But then we get to the second “Brian Cole” of Fairfax, who lists his employment as “bail bondsman” for “Mr Bail Inc.”, and who donated $104.10 to Republicans. Now, the article points out that “Mr Bail Inc.” doesn’t match the name of the “Brian Cole Bail Bonds” family business Cole works at. And yet, based on a quick address Yelp search, it turns out Brian Cole Bail Bonds and Mr Bail Inc. share the exact same address: 4085 Chainbridge Rd Ste 100 Fairfax, VA 22030. In fact, there’s other bail bonds companies listed at that same address including Break Out Bail Bonds and Statewide Bonding. And while it’s possible there are two separate people named Brian Cole who work at different bail bond companies located at the same address, there’s another more plausible scenario. Because Mr Bail Inc is a nationwide chain with franchises around the US. In other words, the Cole family could be operating a Mr Bail Inc franchise out of the same office, and maybe the franchises of a few other bail bonds businesses. Which scenario seems more plausible? Also keep in mind that we can’t rule out the “Brian Cole” who donated to Republicans wasn’t his father. So based on the available evidence, it would appear either Cole or his father donated to Republicans in 2024:
Finally, we get to the finger pointing by FBI director Kash Patel, who characterized the FBI’s apparent bungling of the cellphone data, as “either sheer incompetence or complete intentional negligence.” Patel even asks, “Why wasn’t there any geolocational data done?”, which itself is a fascinating statement. What sort of geolocation analysis had the FBI initially left out? And let’s not forget that one of the reasons cellphone data was seen as so critical in this investigation is the fact that the bomber was seen on video looking at their phone at one point. Neglecting to thoroughly investigate cellphone data really would be sheer incompetence or intentional negligence. Kash Patel was correct on that point:
Again, let’s not forget what was found in that congressional report released back in January: T‑Mobile claims it never gave corrupted data and was never even contacted by the FBI about any difficulties. So was it just a bunch of “sheer incompetence” when the FBI lied to congress about getting corrupted data?
It’s not like there’s a shortage of reasons powerful people might have wanted to see Jeffrey Epstein dead. But just because we already know of an abundance of reasons doesn’t mean there weren’t more, which is something to keep in mind as we digest the latest of trove of released Epstein files. Because as we’ve seen, Epstein wasn’t just the ringleader of elite-compromising pedo-parties who ostensibly offered financial consulting services. He was a far right transhumanist ideologue who wooed a number of highly influential people.
And we’re now learning the political strategies advocated by Epstein apparently included the promotion of 4chan as a means of promoting bigotry and a “hive mind” mentality. Yes, that’s the picture that has emerged from a series of now-released emails from back in late 2011-early 2012 involving a series of meetings Epstein had with 4chan founder Christopher Poole. It turns out Poole was introduced to Epstein in October of 2011 by Boris Nikolic, a former adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As we’ve seen, Bill Gates was particularly close to Epstein, especially in the 2011–2014 when he reportedly spent time at Epstein’s Manhattan estate dozens of times. Epstein ended up meeting with Poole, also known by his online handle “moot”, in late October 2011, with Epstein writing to Nikolic how “I liked mmot [sic] alot,” adding “I drove him home, he is very bright”.
Epstein’s interactions with Poole appeared to end in February 2012, but the fact he met with Poole in October of 2011 in the first place is either a remarkable coincidence or something far more significant to the history of the rise of MAGA and the ‘Alt Right’ than currently appreciated. Because October of 2011 also happened to be the month when the /pol/ forum was created on 4chan. This was after Poole shut down the predecessor to /pol/, the /new/ forum, in January 2011 precisely because it had become a dangerous breeding ground for far right conspiracy theories and radicalization. The /pol/ forum has gone on to become infamous for the promotion of memes like ‘Pizzagate’, a meme that emerged online days before the 2016 election pushing an ‘elite Democrat pedophiles control DC’ narrative that was instrumental is boosting Trump’s faux-populist credentials. In fact, it was December of 2016, just a little over a month after ‘Pizzagate’ first hit the internet, that a gunman walked into the alleged Comet Ping Pong pizza shot to free the captured children in a basement that didn’t exist. ‘Pizzagate’ really did take the internet by storm, and 4chan’s /pol/ was at the center of it.
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that, four days after Epstein first met with Poole, Nikolic emailed Epstein with a link to a Washington Post article about 4chan users collectively hijacking Google’s top search lists, foment bigotry, launch cyberattacks and fuel a “hive mind” mentality. Nikolic commented how the “article describes why I find moot interesting. The potential for manipulation is huge.” The following month, Poole was coordinating another meet up with Epstein via one of Epstein’s subordinates. “Chris, Jeffrey has also said to feel free to bring anyone you think is clever!” the email reads. Poole responds, “Great! I’ll think of some people and get back to you.” So it would appear that Epstein had at least two meetings with Poole shortly after /pol/ was launched.
But there’s another angle to this story that makes the meetings with Poole all the more remarkable: it turns out the Epstein files are filled with weird references to pizza parties! Pizza shows up at least 911 times, with references going back to years before ‘Pizzagate’ was ever a thing! Not only did Epstein happen to meet with Christopher Poole right around the time /pol/ — the forum that would play a major role in popularizing ‘Pizzagate’ in 2016 — but it would appear he was having all sorts of creepy pizza parties too. Funny how that works.
Let’s also keep in mind another detail in this story: Donald Trump was ALWAYS very vulnerable to allegations regarding his relationship with Epstein. We may have only really started collectively focusing on those allegations in 2025 after Trump literally won reelection, in part, in the pledge to finally bring all the Epstein criminals to justice, but the reality was that Trump was always vulnerable to any kind of real Epstein-related scrutiny, especially given his extensive history of flagrant womanizing. So given how the original ‘Pizzagate’ was created as a means of framing Trump as a kind of populist outsider political figure, we have to ask: was Epstein’s own apprent history of throwing pedo-pizza parties the real origins of the ‘Pizzagate’ meme. Sure, according to our official understanding of how ‘Pizzagate’ emerged, the narrative came from a conspiratorial interpretation of the pizza references found in John Podesta’s hacked emails that had just been released by Wikileaks. But now that we know Epstein — one of Trump’s oldest and most infamous friends — was apparently literally running pedo-pizza parties for years, we have to ask if the emerge of the ‘Pizzagate’ narrative really was just a happy coincidence for the then-nascent MAGA movement.
And that’s just one of the revelations in the latest release of the Epstein files that raises the question: just how involved with Epstein in the rise of MAGA-style politics? And not necessarily just MAGA-style politics in the US. It turns out a slew of newly released emails between Epstein and Steven Bannon from 2018–2019 underscore Epstein’s interests in European politics. Nationalist politics, in particular. Bannon was repeatedly trying to solicit Epstein for funds to back his preferred far right European parties according to these emails. And while we don’t find a confirmation that Epstein did end up sponsoring Bannon’s preferred parties, it is very clear that Epstein’s interest in extending his spheres of influence included a number of European officials including extensive communications with Olivier Colom, a former diplomatic adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy.
But another part of what makes Bannon’s repeated requests for Epstein’s funds to back the European far right in 2018–2019 is that this was a period when Bannon and Epstein had reportedly grown quite close. Recall how Bannon was convinced Epstein was an intelligence asset and even reportedly became interested in Epstein as a source for intelligence after he was kicked out of the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. Far right activist Charles Johnson even claimed he was invited by Bannon to meet Epstein. While Johnson says he turned down the invitation, he also stated “What I was told about that meeting by people close to Bannon was that he was trying to replace Epstein as a source for information from various intelligence networks. He saw Epstein as a rival or a partner but he wanted what Epstein had.” And another billionaire Bannon was hanging out with at the time, Guo Wengui, allegedly used prostitutes and hidden cameras to compromise powerful figures as a means of clout and control according to lawsuit. And then there’s the fact that Bannon was even making a documentary about Epstein during this period that Mark Epstein claimed was intended to rehabilitate his brother’s reputation. Despite Bannon’s present day denials, the evidence strongly suggests that Bannon viewed Epstein has an important person who needed to get closer to in the year leading up to Epstein’s arrest and ‘suicide’. Which only further adds to the intrigue over what role Epstein may have been playing in helping to lay the groundwork for the MAGA movement in the first place.
Which brings us to some of the updates we just received regarding the absolute joke of an investigation into that ‘suicide’. First, we learned the identity of the materials manager working in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) on the night Epstein died. Recall how one of the initial mysteries involving the ‘missing minute’ of surveillance tape right before midnight — which Pam Bondi deceptively claimed was just normal to be missing — was the question of whether or not the materials manager happened to leave during that minute. Sure enough, after the missing minute was recovered, we learned that the materials manager did indeed leave during that minute, although that revelation only added to the mystery of identity of who was caught leaving the SHU five minutes later at 12:05 am. We still have no idea who that was. But we know how the identity of the materials manager, Ghitto Bonhomme, whose shift ended at midnight at which point he was replaced on his shift by Michael Thomas, who went on to discover Epstein’s body the next morning after skipping all of the mandatory welfare checks that evening.
We also learned that Bonhomme told investigator he was sleeping from 10pm to midnight, leaving him unable to help identify the ‘orange blob’ caught ascending the staircase at roughly 10:40 pm to the tier where Epstein was held. In addition, it turns out the FBI and Inspector General analyses of the evidence arrived at different conclusion about the nature of the orange blob, with the FBI concluding it was possibly an inmate while the IG determined it was an unidentified corrections officer carrying orange linen. But let’s not forget that someone ascending that staircase at all at that time was not part of the initial official record. Recall how Mark Epstein asserted that investigators never even considered the possibility of a fellow inmate doing the killing. Also recall there was the Daily Mail report from February 2023 that reconstructed the timeline of events of Epstein’s death based on the then-released FBI files and there was no mention of any activity at the stairwell at all at 10:40. There was a entry about Tova Noel walking towards and then away from Epstein’s cell at around 10:30 pm and the next entry is about the start of Thomas’s shift at midnight and Thomas and Noel falsifying the midnight count. The only reason we are talking about the orange blob at all was a CBS News analysis from July 2025 of a video released by the FBI that month. Someone ascending the staircase at 10:40 pm was never part of the official narrative until the FBI released that tape in July of 2025 and CBS pointed out the orange blob. So now we’re learning that one of the key possible witnesses of what went on during that period was allegedly sleeping during that period.
Other revelations involved what the two guards, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, initial witnessed when they found Epstein’s body at 6:30 am the next day. First, not only did Thomas tell investigators that he had no memory of tearing a noose off Epstein’s neck, but Noel also said she didn’t recall seeing a noose around Epstein’s neck. This is particularly notable for a number of reasons. First, recall how we were told that the noose found around his neck was fashioned from a torn bedsheet. We were also told that Thomas claimed Epstein’s body was “suspended from the top bunk in a near-seated position, with his buttocks approximately 1 inch to 1 inch and a half off the floor and his legs extended out straight on the floor,” and yet the noose marks were on the lower part of Epstein’s neck instead of the upper part of the neck that would have been expected had he really been hanging. Also recall how the noose appeared in different places over the course of 90 minutes while the medical examiner photographer surveying the scene. “It definitely appeared to me that the scene was, for lack of a better term, staged a bit,” according to a NY police detective. So staged, in fact, that some of the photos were clearly taken from a different cell based on the floor patterns in the photos. And the FBI forensic investigator showed up, hours after Epstein’s body was discovered, only to find that Epstein’s body had already been removed and taken the medical examiner’s office, destroying the ability of the FBI to recapitulate what happened. Evidence like clippings that could be used for DNA testing were never collected by the jail medical examiner and there’s no indication the FBI ever ran DNA tests of its own. Finally, recall how Michael Baden, the forensic pathologist hired by Mark Epstein to review the forensic evidence, concluded that the marks on Epstein’s throat were more consistent with strangulation than hanging. And now we learn that Michael Thomas didn’t recall taking a noose off Epstein’s neck and neither did Tova Noel recall seeing a noose around his neck either. A noose was indeed found in the cell, but determined not to be used in the alleged hanging. The alleged noose disappeared, further compounding the evidence pointing towards a non-hanging cause of death. And yet it’s hard to think about how Epstein could have been in a hanging position without a noose. But both Noel and Thomas appeared to be in agreement that he was not wearing a noose. You have to wonder if the person who carried out the execution was told someone else would piece together the scene to make it look like a suicide and that never happened.
Interestingly, we’re also told Thomas described Epstein as shirtless when he found him, and yet a shirt was returned by the medical examiner’s office with his body. Oddly, we aren’t told what Noel saw. She was standing there too and presumably saw whether or not Epstein was wearing a shirt. It’s one more example of the shoddy nature of this investigation.
The more we learn, the worse it looks. It’s the enduring theme of this story. It just keeps getting worse. And now we’re not only learning new details about the profoundly corrupt nature of the investigation into Epstein’s ‘suicide’, but it’s starting to look like Epstein may have been for much deeply involved in the mainstreaming and popularization of ‘Pizzagate’, the far right conspiracy theory that was instrumental in the rise of the Trump-era of politics. Oh, and that no one will be punished and the true scope of Epstein’s involvement in the world of power politics will never be adequately explored. We’re learning that too.
Ok, first, here’s a new CBS report on the array of stunning new revelation regarding the ‘investigation’ into Epstein’s ‘suicide’, including both Noel and Thomas finding Epstein without a noose around his neck:
“The new records raise more questions about activity near Epstein’s tier late that evening. Official reviews of Epstein’s death make no mention of the figure in orange, and later pronouncements from authorities including the attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, were that no one entered Epstein’s housing tier the night of his death. Last summer in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” then-deputy FBI director Dan Bongino said, “There’s video clear as day, he’s the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.””
It’s hardly news at this point to learn that the official investigation into Epstein’s death is a legal farce. But it’s still notable that the official coverup appears to remain in place, as was evident by then-deputy FBI director Dan Bongino comments last Summer about how there’s “video clear as day, he’s the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.” As we’ve seen, not only was the view of the stairway to Epstein’s tier almost entirely obscured in the lone functioning camera that covered that part of the SHU, but it was even possible for someone to have entered the SHU, ascended the stairway to Epstein’s tier, and left without ever appearing on camera at all. And then there was the pair of mysteries related to the ‘missing minute’ of surveillance tape right before midnight. But then the ‘missing minute’ was recovered, revealing that, yes, the materials manager did leave during that missing minute. But that revelation only added to the mystery of the unidentified individual caught leaving at 12:05 am. A mystery that remains entirely unexplained to this day. So when we see in this latest report how the official narrative asserting that the orange blob seen ascending that staircase at approximately 10:39 pm was merely an “unidentified CO [corrections officer]” and not a a fellow prisoner, keep in mind that this wouldn’t be the only corrections officer who remains unidentified from they eventing. We still have no idea who it was that left at 12:05 am and there doesn’t appear to be any official interest whatsoever if identifying them:
And those still ongoing mysteries about who ascended that staircase to Epstein’s tier at 10:40 pm and who left the SHU at 12:05 am — along with the mystery of who may have entered and left Epstein’s tier without ever being seen at all — bring us to the newly revealed identify of the materials manager, Ghitto Bonhomme, who allegedly slept while on duting between 10 pm and midnight. Remarkably, it sounds like like neither Bonhomme, nor Tova Noel, were ever asked about the orange-colored figure seen ascending the staircase at 10:40 pm, although we are told Noel indicated that it wouldn’t have been her carrying orange linens ecause “I never gave out linen. Ever.” Once again, ‘everything went wrong’ in the just the right way to ensure no one could provide an answer:
Then we get to the absurd inconsistencies in the testimony of Michael Thomas, who took over Bonhomme’s shift at midnight, on the details of his discovery of Epstein’s body at 6:30 am that morning. Michael Thomas didn’t recall taking a noose off Epstein’s neck and neither did Tova Noel recall seeing a noose around his neck either. A noose was found in the cell, but determined not to be used in the alleged hanging. It’s a weird shoddy cover-up that keeps getting shoddier, with people like Thomas, Noel, and Bonhomme comprising the lower levels of the cover-up along with the prisoners who may have been wrangled in, including carrying out the murder. There’s potentially quite a few people involved, in vastly different positions of power and influence, ranging from prisoners to prison employees, to potentially all sorts of then-senior Trump administration officials up to and including Attorney General Bill Barr and Trump, of course. Jeffrey Epstein had to die and the cover-up was apparently more or a secondary consideration:
And that latest update on the woefully corrupt ‘suicide’ investigation brings us to some of the latest revelations about Epstein’s previously unknown political interests. Including an interest in the 4Chan. Why 4Chan? Because of it’s ability to promote bigotry and a “hive mind” mentality. That was the sentiment Epstein expressed back in 2011 right around the same time 4Chan’s /pol/ forum was created. A forum that went on to become synonymous with the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory. Which makes it all the more relevant that references to “pizza” and “pizza parties” shows up in the Epstein files 911 times:
“The timing may well be a coincidence. There is no evidence that Epstein influenced /pol/’s birth or 4chan’s moderation decisions, or that Poole, who stepped down as the administrator of 4chan at the beginning of 2015, had any direct involvement with Pizzagate the following year. One email does show that Poole hoped to meet Epstein again in 2012, but beyond that, the trail goes cold.”
Jeffrey Epstein happened to have a set of meetings with Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan, shortly before the birth of the infamous /pol/ forum that became synonymous with the promotion of the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory a few years later. A conspiracy theory about elite child abuse that happened to exclusively finger Democrats as the culprits. So when we see how the Epstein files contain the word “pizza” and references to “pizza parties” 911 times, including the years prior to and after the emergence of the Pizzagate meme, it’s hard not to suspect that ‘Pizzagate’ was a kind of insider reference to very real elite ‘pizza parties’ hosted by none other than Jeffrey Epstein:
And note who introduced Epstein to Poole: Boris Nikolic, a former adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As we’ve seen, Bill Gates is now known to have hung out with Epstein, mostly at Epstein’s Manhattan estate, dozens of times in the period of 2011–2014. But also note how the creation of the /pol/ forum was actually preceded by Poole taking down its predecessor, the /new/ forum, in January of 2011, over concerns about the radicalizing nature of the content. So it’s not just that Epstein happened to meet with Poole the same month /pol/ was launched. It’s also the case that the /pol/ predecessor had been taken down earlier that year over concerns about its extremist nature:
And that brings us to the following MSNOW piece that includes a very interest additional piece of information regarding Epstein’s possible interest in Poole and 4Chan: As Nikolic explained to Epstein in an email just days after Poole first met with Epstein, the reason Nikolic was so interested in meeting Poole is precisely because 4Chan’s “potential for manipulation is huge”, while linking to an article discussing how 4chan had been used to foment bigotry, launch cyberattacks, and fuel a “hive mind” mentality. So Jeffrey Epstein was introduced to Poole by some excited about 4Chan’s potential to operate as a ‘Pizzagate’-style far right meme machine, which is exactly what /pol/ was most known for:
“Four days after Epstein met with Poole, Nikolic emailed Epstein again with a comment on 4chan’s potential. “This article describes why I find moot interesting. The potential for manipulation is huge,” Nikolic wrote, linking to a Washington Post article that discussed how 4chan had been used to foment bigotry, launch cyberattacks and fuel a “hive mind” mentality.”
As we can see, Boris Nikolic wasn’t just a fan of 4Chan. He was seemingly serving as a kind of architect for the kind of cultural zeitgeist that culminated in MAGA. That was the sentiment shared days after Epstein’s initial meeting with Poole, which was apparently followed up with another meeting between Epstein, Poole, and who knows who else the next month:
What are the odds Epstein didn’t share Nikolic’s enthusiasm over 4chan’s ‘potential’ for mass manipulation? It’s the kind of revelation about Epstein’s interests that suggest he was serving as a kind of pre-MAGA visionary for exactly the kind of politics championed by Donald Trump. Politics that conveniently project ‘pedophile pizza party’ narratives onto Democrats at the same time Epstein was apparently engaging in exactly that kind of criminality!
And as the following article reveals, Epstein political interests weren’t limited to the US, especially in the final years of his life. Europe was very much on his radar, with Steve Bannon frequently courting Epstein seeking funds for his own European political ambitions. Recall how Bannon was convinced Epstein was an intelligence asset and even reportedly became interested in Epstein as a source for intelligence after he was kicked out of the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. Far right activist Charles Johnson even claimed he was invited by Bannon to meet Epstein. While Johnson says he turned down the invitation, he also stated “What I was told about that meeting by people close to Bannon was that he was trying to replace Epstein as a source for information from various intelligence networks. He saw Epstein as a rival or a partner but he wanted what Epstein had.” And another billionaire Bannon was hanging out with at the time, Guo Wengui, allegedly used prostitutes and hidden cameras to compromise powerful figures as a means of clout and control according to lawsuit. Bannon was even making a documentary about Epstein that Mark Epstein claimed was intended to rehabilitate his brother’s reputation. It’s hardly a surprise at this point to learn that Bannon had a keen interest in cultivate Epstein as an ally in his European far right ambitions. But it’s notable that Epstein’s own ties to European politicians was far more extensive than previously known. He really was an international man of mystery. Scummy mystery, but real mystery:
“There is no evidence of any direct relations between Salvini and Epstein, nor any suggestion that Salvini was involved in Epstein’s sex-trafficking network. But what the messages do reveal is Epstein’s interest in European nationalists.”
It wasn’t just Steve Bannon trying to coax Epstein into becoming a sponsor of European politics. Epstein was already doing that on his own. And while it doesn’t appear that his relationships were exclusive to far right politicians, it does appear that he did have a desire to see Europe’s far right parties take power:
And as with so much of this story, we can expect to get a glimpse into the true state of affairs at best. We’ll almost certainly never get the full story. How deep was Epstein’s influence across Europe? Don’t forget he’s presumably an intelligence asset, as Steve Bannon also believed, so the deeper the influence the better as far as his sponsors would be concerned. Sponsors who are presumably already have an Epstein 2.0 up and running for the next generation of corrupted leadership. Because why wouldn’t they? It’s not like there are consequences.
The more we learn the worse it gets. Over and over. But it’s not just the cover up that keeps looking worse and worse. The more we’re learning about the actually crimes, the worse it’s looking too. Crimes that might involve the murder of at least one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, if the allegations found in recently released trove of files are to be believed. It’s gotten to the point where California Representative Ted Lieu is now publicly demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi explain a file involving a witness who contacted the FBI with a reports about a girl who told the witness both Epstein and Donald Trump raped her and ended up dead days later. According to the file, the Department of Justice (DOJ) never even interviewed the witness.
Yes, the DOJ apparently ignored a witness who contacted the FBI in late October 2020, days before the 2020 election, describing a series of interactions he had with both the deceased girl and Trump in the 1990s. The witness, claiming to be limousine driver, told the FBI he first had an experience while working in the Dallas/Fort Worth area back in 1995. He happened to have Trump as a passenger and overheard a phone conservation where Trump continuously stated the name “Jeffrey” and made references to “abusing some girl.” He went on to tell the FBI he was “a few seconds from pulling the limousine over on the median and within a few seconds of pulling him out of the car and hurting him due to some of (the) things he was saying.”
Flash forward to 1999, days before Christmas, when the driver ended up speaking with a woman, days before Christmas, about how he met Trump. She allegedly told him Trump and Epstein had both raped. He encouraged her to go to the police, but she replied “I can’t. They will kill me.” He ended up hearing from her on Christmas Day that she had indeed called the police. But then, on Jan 10, 2000, the driver’s girlfriend informed him that the woman was dead. He also claimed officers on the scene stated there was no way it was suicide, but suicide was what the coroner concluded. The caller also told the FBI the woman died in Kiefer, Oklahoma.
Now, at this point we have no way of verifying the person’s claims to the FBI. Except, news reports do confirm that a 19 year old student was indeed found dead from an apparent suicide in the town of Kiefer, Oklahoma, on January 10, 2000. And while it’s possible this caller just concocted the whole thing, using a news report of an unrelated suicide to lend credence to the story, the fact of the matter is that the DOJ apparently never even interviewed this person. It’s the kind of story that suggests the worst of the Epstein crimes were likely systematically not investigated.
But there’s another angle to this story about the limousine driver that could be increasingly important when it comes to maintaining the cover up now that so much damning information has been released. Because it turns out the caller also told the FBI that he knew the identity of “John Doe #2” from the Oklahoma City bombing and that this person is connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Was that why the FBI never even bothered to interview the guy? Because, on the one hand, it’s the kind of claim the DOJ should, in theory, also be keenly interested in learning more about. But, obviously, it’s also the kind of claim that makes it easy to dismiss the caller as an unhinged kook. The caller effectively poison-pilled his own claims by brings up “John Doe #2”. Was that intentional?
And that story about the DOJ ignoring possibly poison-pilled allegations brings us to another story that should be entirely expected at this point: governments are now dismissing some of the new Epstein-related stories as simply ‘Russian and/or Chinese disinformation’. As we’ll see in a New York Times article below, the Dalai Lama is already insisting that he had never met or interacted with Epstein ever in response to a number of social media posts linking the Dalai Lama to Epstein that allegedly emanated from China. The NYTimes article treats the denials by the Dalai Lama as credible. And yet, as we’ve seen, there is ample evidence of the Dalai Lama’s ties to Epstein, including journalist Michael Wolfe recounting how he met the Dalai Lama at Epstein’s Manhattan residence.
The NYTimes report goes on to describe a series of stories about Epstein’s ties to various European government officials as similarly the result of a Russian disinformation campaign. As we’ve also seen, Epstein’s ties to European elites appear to be far more extensive than previously recognized based on the contents of the released files, including including Olivier Colom, a former diplomatic adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy. And yet, it does appear that someone decided to create a fake version of real French news website — http://france-soir.net instead of http://france-soir.fr — that was promoting fake stories tying Epstein to the Macron government. In other words, someone made it exceedingly easy to identify their disinformation campaign. A copycat website isn’t exactly subtle.
The French government agency tasked with monitoring foreign disinformation, Viginum has concluded that the disinformation campaign was likely the product of Storm-1516, which is presumed to be operated by Russian military intelligence. The fake website was linked “with a high degree of confidence to the CopyCop information operation.” And CopyCop is allegedly the product of John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive who has been living in Russia since 2017.
So we are told by the French government that Russian military intelligence is using an American asset, John Mark Dougan, to promote stories falsely linking Epstein to the Macron government. Conveniently, a fake website is involved so someone did engage in a hoax. A very easily identified hoax.
Intriguingly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Dougan’s name pop up in relation to Epstein. Dougan is someone who fled to Russia in 2016 after an FBI raid that he claims was politically motivated. What prompted that FBI raid? Well, Dougan happened to be a disgruntled former Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office officer who ran a website, pbsotalk.org, dedicated to revealing allegations of corruption in in Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office. In 2016, pbsotalk.org posted a large number of confidential documents, resulting in an FBI raid on Dougan’s home. Dougan claimed he sold his website to associates in Russia back in 2013 and had nothing to do with posting the documents. As we’ve seen, Dougan ended up fleeing to Russia, where he resides to this day, while pbsotalk.org continued posting content. Those posts include allegations surrounding the efforts by Florida Sen Lauren Book to investigate the handling of Epstein’s lenient work release in 2008–2009 by the Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw. In 2019, Pbsotalk.org posted information claiming Bradshaw’s office was using “imminent danger” excuses to gain access to Book’s emails and phone. Book confirmed that she had received numerous threatening phone calls warning her to stop her investigations. And the details surrounding Epstein’s lenient terms of release back in 2009 really are quite shocking. After preparing a 50-plus-page indictment on sex trafficking charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida shelved the charges and allowed Epstein to plead guilty to minor charges in state court. That’s how Epstein ended up in the Palm Beach County Jail — and then on work release approved by Sheriff Bradshaw. In July of 2019, Bradshaw announced the internal affairs investigation after reports emerged that Epstein — while on work release in Palm Beach — was allowed female visitors to his office, including at least one visit that led to a sexual encounter. It was Bradshaw who approved that work release, meaning his announced an investigation by his own department into his own actions. Bradshaw’s office is also the lead law enforcement detail assisting the Secret Service during President Donald Trump’s visits to Mar-a-Lago. John Mark Dougan isn’t exactly a credible figure. But there’s also no denying at this point that the fundamental claims he had been making for years regarding the alleged corruption of the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office does have a basis in reality.
And as we’re going to see in a Miami Herald report from July of 2024, the original investigation into Epstein by the Palm Beach prosecutors was itself so corrupt that two of the police officer involved actually went over the heads of the state prosecutors to bring in the US Attorney’s office. It was when the prosecutors told the police they didn’t plan to prosecute Epstein because they believed the girls were prostitutes that Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter and the lead detective, Joe Recarey, took the case to the Attorney’s Office. That’s how the federal investigators got involved in the first place. Of course, in the end, federal investigators simply allowed Epstein to plead guilty to minor charges in state court and that was it. Epstein went on to serve 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed to work in his outside office and at his Palm Beach mansion. A work release policy that was so lenient that Epstein was allowed female visitors to his office which resulted in at least one sexual encounter. And that work release policy was, of course, approved by Sheriff Bradshaw.
The allegations are indeed getting pretty wild, and likely to get wilder should the remaining files ever get released. The attempts to spin it as simply disinformation are only going to get wilder, and more desperate, too. And that’s all why we should probably expect to see a lot more trumpeting about ‘Russian and Chinese disinformation’ when it comes to the ongoing public digestion of the Epstein files. And also why we should probably expect that glaring questions o remain unanswered for as long as possible. Like the question why the DOJ never even bothered interviewing someone who claimed to have information on a Trump/Epstein murder:
““Dear [Attorney General Pam Bondi]: Since you creepily spied on the unredacted Epstein files I read, you know I read this one,” Lieu wrote Thursday in a social media post on X, referencing reports that Bondi and her agency appeared to be tracking lawmakers’ searches in its Epstein files database.”
Congress wants answers: what’s the explanation behind the 2020 claims made by this limousine driver? It’s an explosive allegation found in the released trove of Epstein documents, and hardly the only one. Is there evidence to back these allegations up? Well, as we’ll see in the following article from back in December, there was indeed a girl found dead in a small town in northeastern Oklahoma in an apparent suicide who does fit the description given by this limousine driver. Beyond that, we’re also learning that the driver made the call to the FBI with these allegations on October 27, 2020, just days before the 2020 election. According to the driver, not only had he advised the girl to go to the police when she first recounted back in 1999, days before Christmas, the abuse she experienced from Epstein and Trump, but he saw her again on Christmas Day and learned she had indeed called the police. On January 10, 2000, his girlfriend informed him that the girl was dead. He went on to claim that officers on the scene had stated there was no way it was suicide but the coroner stated it was suicide.
And while the allegations made by this anonymous limousine driver to the FBI are at least somewhat backed up by the available evidence, he went on to make another rather amazing claim: He knew the identity of “John Doe #2” from the Oklahoma City bombing, and this individual was connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton. It’s the kind of over-the-top poison-pilling claim that raises the question as to whether or not this FBI tipster intentionally attempting to co-mingle a real allegation about the abuse and murder of an Epstein victim with an allegation designed to be dismissed:
“The FBI got the call about the Oklahoma death at its National Threat Operations Center on Oct. 27, 2020, according to the three-page report. The presidential election that year was on Nov. 3.”
The timing sure is notable: A tip coming just days before the 2020 election. A tip that included both the limousine driver having witnessed a conversation Trump was having in 1995 with “Jeffrey” about “abusing some girl”, but also the interactions with an apparent victim of Trump’s and Epstein’s abuse four years later in 1999, days for Christmas. It’s also notable that it doesn’t appear to have been an anonymous tip. The Justice Department has the caller’s name blacked out in the released documents, but there’s no indication they weren’t willing to identify themselves to investigators:
And yet, it does appear that evidence does independently exist that is aligned with the claims made by this alleged limousine driver, at least when it comes to the young woman who was found dead on January 10, 2000. Is there further evidence of Dusti Rhea Duke interacting with Epstein and/or Trump? And is it her name that was blacked out in those released documents?
But then we get to the other side of these claims by the limousine driver. Claims that seem like the kind of additional detail that would could imagine might be added to an allegation if one specifically wants it to NOT be taken seriously: the claim that the limousine driver also happened to know the identity of John Doe No. 2 and that this person is connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton:
And that story about a tip to the FBI that, on the one hand, does seem potentially credible when it comes to the allegations against Trump and Epstein, but simultaneously poison-pilled with claims about the Clintons and “John Doe No. 2” brings us to the following story in the New York Times about the growing claims of foreign governments turning the release of the Epstein files into a global anti-West propaganda opportunity. With Russia taking the bulk of the blame but China too. And as we can see with the ready acceptance of this ‘foreign disinformation’ narrative around people like the Dalai Lama — who was reportedly quite chummy with Epstein according to Michael Wolfe, who met the Dalai Lama at Epstein’s Manhattan residence at least once — the ‘foreign disinformation’ explanation remains a potent defense against these allegations. Even when there’s ample evidence to the contrary:
“Several conspiracy theories sprang from unconfirmed tips with dubious origins that were published in the government’s searchable database. Some of the documents include scanning errors and formatting quirks, such as an email that seemed to refer to a “sexy and cute, =9yo,” an abbreviation of “year old.” Three other copies of the email in the tranche identify the subject as “19yo.””
Conspiracy theories of dubious origin. That’s how many of the allegations found in the released Epstein files are being framed in this article by the New York Times. And while some of the allegations are, no doubt, highly dubious, it’s rather notable how even established facts are being frame as some sort of disinformation. Like the fact that the files were filled with references to pizza parties. As we’ve seen, while the ‘Pizzagate’ narrative that was aggressively pushed by far right sources for years may itself have a dubious origin, the fact that the Epstein files were filled with pizza party references and Epstein himself personally met with Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan, right around the same time the /pol/ forum was launched suggests the possibility that ‘Pizzagate’ was, in fact, a kind of intentional deflection of something very real:
And then there’s the deflections regarding the allegations of the Dalai Lama’s relationship with Epstein. According to this report, that’s all Chinese disinformation and the Dalai Lama had never actually met Epstein. In fact, as we’ve seen, journalist Michael Wolfe claims to have met the Dalai Lama at Epstein’s Manhattan estate and Epstein even donated to the Prajnopaya Institute at MIT, which is led by a Dalai Lama disciple, Tenzin Priyadarshi. And yet here we find the casual dismissal of those reported ties between Epstein and the Dalai Lama as merely Chinese propaganda:
Nor should it come as a suprise to find that ‘Russian disinformation’ is now being blamed for the various reports on Epstein’s ties to European governments. As we saw, a shocking number of European government officials and elites have emerged in the released files, including Olivier Colom, a former diplomatic adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy. And yet it appears that someone has been generating fake websites designed to look like real news outlets where unsubstantiated allegations of ties to Epstein have been pushed. Conveniently, these fake websites have been attributd to “a Russian disinformation campaign known as Storm-1516.” So thanks to this alleged Russian disinformation campaign, it’s easier than ever for European officials to deny reported ties to Epstein. It was all just a Russian hoax, you see:
And as we can see from the following report on the ‘Russia-link Epstein smears’ against the Macron government, France’s Viginum agency, which tracks foreign disinformation campaigns, claims to have attribute the fake news article about Epstein’s ties to French elites to John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive living in Russia who allegedly “maintains part of the digital infrastructure of the Storm-1516 information operation”:
“France’s Viginum agency, which tracks foreign disinformation campaigns, said it had on Wednesday detected a social media operation involving a fabricated video report alleging that “journalists had uncovered a compromising exchange implicating Emmanuel Macron”.”
Viginum, France’s disinformation monitoring agency, is sounding the alarm. Russian disinformation is attacking the Macron administration with false Epstein stories. The fake stories were “likely” created by a group called Storm-1516, which “likely” linked to Russian military intelligence but also the “CopyCop information operation” that is linked to John Mark Dougan, and American fugitive living in Russia who “maintains part of the digital infrastructure of the Storm-1516 information operation.” It’s unclear how exactly Viginum arrived at all of these conclusions about who was behind the fake http://france-soir.net website, but what we can conclude with a very high degree of confidence is that whoever was behind this fake website clearly didn’t expect to not get caught. Their disinformation is being pushed from a fake website with a fake URL! The fake story might be taken seriously for a day or so but it’s not exactly difficult to debunk content from fake copycat website. Which makes this the kind of disinformation campaign that the Macron government is probably pretty happy to discover:
And while it remains unclear if John Mark Dougan really was somehow involved with the fake site,he isn’t just some random fugitive. This is someone who has been involved with the publishing of allegations regarding the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office’s handling of the Epstein investigation for years. In other words, while there does appear to be ample evidence that John Mark Dougan really is involved with the operations of fake news sites and disinformation campaigns, we shouldn’t necessarily assume everything he’s been involved with exposing over the years is all fraudulent. On the contrary, Dougan appears to be someone perfectly situated to effectively taint very real stories, with an assist from media outlets eager to dismiss real stories as merely “Russian disinformation”. Stories like the following July 2024 story about how Palm Beach prosecutors involved with the original Epstein investigation effectively protected Epstein by treating his victims as prostitutes who knew who they were doing and not under-aged victims of sex-trafficking :
“The records contain nearly 200 pages, including the testimony of two girls who were molested by Epstein, the New York financier who abused hundreds of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion between 1996 and 2008. Epstein managed to escape serious charges, in part because the Palm Beach prosecutor at the time, Barry Krischer, elected to charge him with minor prostitution and solicitation rather than bringing a felony sexual assault case.”
Long-sealed documents were finally unsealed, five years after Epstein’s death, following years of legal action by media outlets. And as we can see, Epstein managed to escape serious charges due, in part, to the fact that Palm Beach prosecutor, Barry Krischer, chose to charge him with minor prostitution and solicitation instead of felony sexual assault. He was treated as a sex customer, not the head of a sex trafficking operation:
Notably, while Barry Krischer and the lead prosecutor in the case, Lanna Belohlavek, choosing to treat Epstein’s victims as prostitutes, others involved in the investigation were outraged by this. Specifically, Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter and the lead detective, Joe Recarey, who both went over Rikischer’s head to take the case to the US Attorney’s Office. That’s how the federal government got involved in the first place. Of course, as we saw, after preparing a 50-plus-page indictment on sex trafficking charges, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida shelved the charges, instead allowing Epstein to plead guilty to minor state charges. That’s how he ended up with a lenient 13-month jail sentence that included the privilege to work in his outside office and at his Palm Beach mansion!
It wasn’t just a federal sweetheart deal. It was federal and state sweetheart deal. A sweetheart deal we still have yet to be adequately explained to the public. Time will tell if we ever get an answer. But if so, try not to be shocked when you are told to ignore it because some random Russian or Chinese website is talking about it too. We’re in that phase of the cover up.
Too many horrible revelations. Not enough time to digest it all. We’re in one of those phases of the Epstein scandal. Perhaps for the last time if Attorney General Pam Bondi’s claims about all the files having now been released are to be believed. An claim already belied by the new revelation that the Justice Department withheld documents related to interviews of victims who alleged to have been sexually assaulted by President Trump when they were a minor. It’s an avalanche of scandalous new details. And that’s on top of everything we already knew. Millions of documents are still being processed by the global public, with new horrible insights popping up daily. And that doesn’t even count the emerging scandal about the pages we’re learning that are missing from the release. It’s kind of like Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with sh#t” strategy on full-auto in reverse. The zone is getting flooded, but it’s not inconsequential sh#t. It’s devastating sh#t. So devastating to the political order it would take WWIII to distract from it all.
So with President Trump having just launched some sort of vague regime change military operation against Iran in concert with Israel, just days after that report about the accusations against him being repressed by the Justice Department, here’s a pair of articles that serve as a reminder that the devastating revelations we’ve been getting about the Epstein scandal aren’t limited to revelations about President Trump. As the articles make clear, the true scope of this scandal is likely much broader than we still understand. Starting with the fact that we’re now learning Epstein served as both a benefactor and admissions-‘fixer’ for dozens of students at elite universities around the world. Both for aspiring young students from humble backgrounds but also the children of the elite. It turns out to be another layer of Epstein’s influence-peddling. One offer after another to cover the tuition at elite private schools and even help gain admissions. And while it’s unclear of the children of the elites ended up becoming Epstein’s victims of sexual abuse, he was definitely abusing at least some of the students he patronized.
Epstein’s patronage of students at elite universities appears to have started in the early ’90s and was maintained all the way up to his death in 2019. In fact, money was even disbursed from his accounts for some scholarships months after his death. As we’ll see in the second article excerpt below, the early years are particularly informative in terms of how Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell exploited this form of patronage. It appears to have started with the prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts boarding school in Michigan which Epstein himself attended when he was 14 in the late 60s. Epstein returned to the school in the early 90s as a wealthy patron eager to sponsor the next generation of students, giving over $400,000 over a 13 year period. According to the school, his donations ended in 2003, implying the donation around 1990.
Half of that $400,000 was reportedly spent on the construction of a lodge on campus in 1994. Notably, according to file “EFTA00097133” in the released documents, $185,000 of that $200,000 came from Lex Wexner, the billionaire who appears to be the real force behind the rise of Epstein and whose role in all of this has never really been adequately explored. In other words, like so much of what we’ve seen in this story, Epstein’s patronage of all these students was a Wexner-financed operation. Recall how Wexner financed the purchase of two adjacent prime Manhattan pieces of real estate — 9 and 11 E. 71st Street — in the late 80s and then effectively handed ownership of the properties to Epstein in 1992. And now we can add the construction of the Interlochen lodge to the list of Wexner’s still-unexplained gifts to Epstein.
But the construction of the lodge at Interlochen isn’t the only example of Epstein successfully ingratiating himself with the Interlochen administration. He was also made a member of the Interlochen’s President’s Club for high-level donors which entailed roles like “attending concerts, events and special meetings, identifying prospective students and providing counsel to the president on issues and policies of the institution.” Yes, Epstein was asked to find prospective students thanks to his generous Wexner-financed donations.
It also turns out Epstein and Maxwell were allowed to stay at the lodge during visits to the Interlochen campus. Epstein and Maxwell were allowed to stay in the lodge for up to two-weeks a year while still receiving a tax deduction for the donation. During these visits, the pair would stroll the campus with a small dog, striking up conversations with students. As we should expect, those conversations would lead to offers to finance the rest of their education, with further visits to follow. Numbers would be exchanged and the parents would get contacted about meeting with Epstein and Maxwell to arrange for the scholarship. When parents contacted the school to inquire about Epstein they would get assurances that he was very loyal and there was nothing to worry about. And when students did accept Epstein’s scholarships, they were expected to then meet with Epstein and meetings were arranged. Two former Interlochen students who recount how they accepted Epstein’s offers describe how they went on to be sexually abused by Epstein for years. They were 13 and 14 when they first met him. Epstein and Maxwell reportedly made annual visits to the school from 1994 through 2000.
One student even recounted how she was asked by Epstein to accompany a high-profile individual to an event in New York City. When she refused, Epstein cut off the scholarship. So it would appear Epstein was treating his student victims as potential escorts for his friends and associates.
And Interlochen is just one of numerous institutions where Epstein reportedly played this student-benefactor role. For over a quarter century. In one example, an international model, Ditè Anata, contacted Epstein back in 2013 to see if he would be willing to help a Juilliard student she knew cover her housing costs. Ominously, Anata requested that Epstein “be nice and behave your best :) If you feel like you can’t be official I would rather you not help her.” When asked by USA TODAY about whether or not she was aware of Epstein’s child sex charges from five years earlier, Anata explained that Epstein told her the investigation was “politically motivated and set up by his adversaries.” It appears Epstein did indeed manage to arrange for off-campus housing for the Juilliard student. A lawyer for the student confirmed that she ultimately “endured substantial abuse at the hands of Epstein.” Juilliard claims it never received any payments from Epstein, raising questions about how he may have been hiding himself as the financial source, keeping in mind that his jailing was a matter of the public record at that point.
And then there’s the children of the elite who received various gifts from Epstein. For example, in 2016, Epstein personally appealed to the president of Bard College to help with the admission of the daughter of Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn. She was indeed admitted, although the college insists that he was “accepted on the merits of her own qualifications for admission.”
But Epstein’s ‘gifts’ to the elite weren’t just with admissions. He was also making offers to pay for the expensive schooling to elite parents who could obviously afford it themselves. In 2018, Epstein offered to cover the tuition for the daughter of Caroline Lang, then a Warner Brother’s executive in France. “Waouh!!! I am spoiled!!!!! Great!!!!” Lang wrote back. Recall how how Caroline Lang happens to be daughter of Jack Lang, France’s former culture minister. And not only did Epstein meet with Jack, but it turns out Caroline founded an offshore company with Epstein in 2016 to invest in the work of young artists! Caroline didn’t need the money, but she accepted it. It’s an example of how relatively it was for Epstein to ingratiate himself into these elite circles. It turns out bribing wealthy people is pretty easy.
And not only were the children of prominent academics another target of Epstein’s largesse, but he was apparently well known enough for doing this that some academics approached him with requests to finance their children’s educations. Joscha Bach, a former MIT professor who now works as an AI researcher, repeatedly made such requests, ultimately receiving $48,000 from Epstein for education expenses. Bach explained to USA TODAY that, yes, he was aware of the Epstein’s past convictions when he made the request, but fellow academics assured him that Epstein had changed. Bach was also a postdoctoral researcher at the time, a role notorious for a relatively low salary. Bach added that Epstein never asked for anything in return, other than access to the “minds of individuals he found interesting.” This is a good time to recall how the Epstein Foundation sponsored the development of OpenCog, a software development kit for the building of ‘smart’ AI characters based on a model for how the mind works.
Another rather notable recipient of Epstein’s generosity was the husband of Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US. Mandelson’s husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, had the 10,000 pound tuition for an osteopathic program covered by Epstein in 2009, the year of Epstein’s release from jail. Mandelson has subsequently not only been fired from his diplomatic post in September following the initial coverage of his ties to Epstein, but he has subsequently been arrested for passing sensitive government information to Epstein. Was that sensitive information handed to Epstein as a kind of ‘thank you’ for those tuition payments?
In other cases, Epstein was much more explicit about what he wanted in return for his ‘help’: In one email from April 2017, Epstein explained to the recipient of a $30,000 tuition gift that “You will need to provide three assistants. 10k per. If you don’t you will have to repay.” It’s not hard to imagine what Epstein had in mind when he was asking for “assistants”. So it would appear Epstein was turning the recipients of his benevolence into recruiters for his sex trafficking operations. Amazingly, in 2009, the year of his release from jail, he was arranging to cover the tuition for a student to attend a massage school. It’s unclear what exactly Epstein requested in exchange for his ‘generosity’ in this case, but given that the student wrote how, “I am of course more than happy to do anything for you in return. miss you a lot. Xo,” it’s, again, not hard to imagine how he was paid back.
That’s all part of the deluge of revelations, all pointing towards an influence peddling operation that was even more extensive than previously known. Epstein wasn’t just an infamous elite socialite with a rotating harem of abused girls typically plucked from under-privileged circumstances. He was a kind of elite sugar-daddy academic fixer too, heaping financial gifts and favors upon the already wealthy and powerful. With Lex Wexner playing a still under-explored role as Epstein’s own supreme sugar-daddy, essentially bankrolling Epstein’s ascension into his powerful role. Which underscores the necessity of getting a better understanding of the financier role Epstein was playing too this whole time. He wouldn’t have been able to do what he did if he hadn’t amassed a fortune, ostensibly for the financial services he was offering to billionaires. And yet, that explanation never really made sense. We’ve never gotten a picture of what those financial services might be. But whatever it was Epstein did for billionaires like Wexner, he was paid handsomely for it. So much that he could afford to finance the education of one elite child after another.
It’s worse than we realized. And much bigger. In other words, the perfect time to launch WWIII, so we can have more important things to worry about:
“The trove of documents released in January revealed Epstein’s largesse extended beyond these New York colleges. A USA TODAY review of hundreds of files shows Epstein or entities tied to him paid at least $840,000 to cover students’ costs at 28 different schools, according to a Deutsche Bank document in the Justice Department files. In addition, USA TODAY found Epstein arranged for tuition payments for dozens of people at other schools across the country, including large public universities, for-profit art colleges and elite private universities.”
It’s not a revelation at this point to learn that Epstein was interested gaining influence over academic elites, and scientists in particular. But paying the tuitions of to attend elite schools is a new twist. Especially since it sounds like he was using his patron status to sexually abuse them. Thus far, the demographic of girls recruited by Epstein and Maxwell appeared to be focused on girls from troubled homes with minimal support networks. Girls like Virginia Giuffre, whose own father allegedly abused her when she was younger and who may have even accepted hush money payments from Epstein to cover up the abuse of abuse of his daughter. To learn that Epstein was patronizing and then abusing students at elite schools, often with well-connected parents, adds a new dimension to this scandal. Especially since so many of these acts of ‘generosity’ by Epstein took place after his initial arrest and jailing. Although it sounds like some of the students recruited into Epstein’s orbit were recruited by women who were well aware of his abusive nature. Like the anecdote about a student at Juilliard who ended up with Epstein as a patron thanks to Ditè Anata, an international model with a top agency, who appeared to connect Epstein to the family of the prospective Juilliard student in 2013. Not only did Anata implore Epstein to “behave your best :)”, but this student was ultimately substantially abused by Epstein. And presumably wasn’t the only student at an elite university Epstein was patronizing and then abusing. It raises the question of whether or not Epstein was sexually abusing the children of the elites he was patronizing too. But when we see how Epstein made demands to a recipient of $30,000 that “You will need to provide three assistants. 10k per. If you don’t you will have to repay,” we can see how these donations could serve as a means of turning the recipients into recruiters for his sex trafficking operations, basically ‘pre-paying’ his victims for the upcoming abuses:
Not surprisingly, the elite parents whose children were patronized by Epstein with these offers of tuition and boarding costs included academics like Joscha Bach, a former MIT professor who now works as an AI researcher, who apparently repeatedly asked Epstein to cover his children’s schooling, including even pre-school costs. Bach’s children had at least $48,000 in education costs covered. And while it’s unclear what Epstein requested in return, other than access to the “minds of individuals he found interesting,” it’s worth recalling how Epstein had a keen interest in artificial intelligence and even sponsored the development of OpenCog, a software development kit that allows for the building of ‘smart’ AI characters based on a model for how the mind works. In other words, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that Epstein was allowed to meet all sorts of leading figures in the field of artificial intelligence thanks to his sponsorship of Bach’s children’s schooling. Also note how Bach explains that he was a postdoc at the time, which would explain his apparent inability to afford all of this schooling, which raises the question of how many other postdocs Epstein targeted:
But another part of what makes Epstein’s patronage rather notable is the reality that so many of these figures were, themselves, quite wealthy and presumably able to afford the expenses for their children or relatives themselves. Like Woody Allen or the UK’s Peter Mandelson, who was just arrested for handing sensitive government documents to Epstein while he was serving in the government as business secretary. Now, in the case of Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi, it appears the service Epstein was offering was to personally appeal to the president of Bard College, Leon Botstein, to help secure admission for their daughter. But in Mandelson’s case, he was simply paying 10,000 pound for Mandelson’s husband to attend an osteopathy program. It’s an amazingly low bar for effectively bribing public officials. Which raise the question: did Mandelson hand over those documents to Epstein before or after Epstein agreed to finance his husband’s education? Either way, the fact this happened in 2009, right around the time Epstein was released from jail following his federal sweetheart deal, is itself quite telling regarding Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein:
And then there’s the ‘wowing’ of Caroline Lang, then a Warner Brothers executive in France, by offering to cover her daughter’s tuition. It’s hard to imagine a Warner Brothers executive couldn’t easily afford their child’s education. Again, just how low is the bar for elite corruption? Is this normal? Also recall how Caroline Lang happens to be daughter of Jack Lang, France’s former culture minister. And not only did Epstein meet with Jack, but it turns out Caroline founded an offshore company with Epstein in 2016 to invest in the work of young artists! So when Epstein made that offer in 2018, it was an offer he was making to someone who was already involved with his ‘investments’ in young artists:
And note how the tuitions covered by Epstein included tuition for massage school. Which raises the question of how many of the young girls working for his under the pretense of being a masseuse were there, in part, as a form of repayment for his covering their massage school tuition. Also note how one of the released messages from an aspiring massage school student was sent in 2009, the year of his release from jail. So he was allowed to finance massage school students’ tuition right after being release from jail:
Also note how Epstein was not only engaging in this form of patronage even in 2019, but payments were still going out even months after his death. This was part of the Epstein story up to the point of his ‘suicide’ in jail:
And that highly disturbing string of revelations brings us to another story that has emerged in the recently released trove of files: it turns out Epstein managed to become a student patron at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, a prestigious boarding school Epstein himself attended when he was 14. At least $400,000 was given over a period of at least 13 years starting in the 90s. Epstein even became one of the members of the President’s Club for high-level donors, where members were to “assist Interlochen by attending concerts, events and special meetings, identifying prospective students and providing counsel to the president on issues and policies of the institution.” Yes, Epstein wasn’t a sponsor for individual student scholarships at Interlochen. He was a highly valued donor who helped identify prospective students and was ultimately afforded a range of privileges, including the privilege to stay a lodge on campus during his visits. A lodge built with an Epstein donation of $200,000. Although, as one document in the released files indicates, $185,000 of that $200,000 actually came from Epstein’s financial sponsor Les Wexner. And as we’ll see, Epstein and Maxwell would basically cruise the campus, walking a small dog, looking for students to interact with and assess, with at least two students describing how Epstein came to become their tuition sponsor starting at the ages of 13 and 14 and then using that status to start sexually abusive relationships that went on for years. One victim was even threatened with being cut off from her scholarship if she refused requests, like accompanying a high-profile individual to an event in New York. The school claims Epstein’s sponsorship ended in 2003. So given that Epstein was still playing this student benefactor role in 2019 and started in the early 90s, we’re looking at close to three decades of Epstein preying on students, including young teens, at elite institutions and even boarding schools:
“Epstein’s association with Interlochen dates back to 1967, when as a 14-year-old bassoon player, he attended the school’s summer camp. When he renewed his ties to the school in the 1990s, Interlochen viewed him as a loyal alumnus and major benefactor, administrators said. He lavished the school with donations and used his power and influence to gain access to spaces where the administrators felt young kids and artists were safe.”
Epstein returned to his old campus in the 1990’s, flush with cash and ready to become a loyal patron, giving at least $400,000 over a 13 year period, which included $200,000 for the financing of a lodge where Epstein and Maxwell would stay during their visits. As released documents have revealed, Les Wexner happened to pay $185,000 of that $200,000, which is a reminder that Wexner was a major source for Epstein’s lifestyle and largesse during this period. Recall how Wexner financed the purchase of two adjacent prime Manhattan pieces of real estate — 9 and 11 E. 71st Street — in the late 80s and then effectively handed ownership of the properties to Epstein in 1992. The financing of this lodge was apparently part of this still unexplained role Wexner was playing in establishing Epstein as a wealthy socialite:
And as we can see from the allegations made by two former Interlochen students, Epstein approached them when they were just 13 or 14 years old, grooming them and abusing them for years. Note how Epstein wasn’t just paying for the girls’ education at Interlochen. He was offering to finance their further education after they graduate. Which raises the possibility that some of the victims had their educations at multiple institutions covered by Epstein, with abuse presumably taking place as part of the exchange:
And note how Interlochen allegedly assured the mother of one of victims that, “He is our guardian. … He is trustworthy around the kids, and there is no need to worry.” In fairness to Interlochen, this was long before Epstein was a known predator. Given that Epstein’s student patronage went all the way up to his 2019 death, you have to wonder how many of the other institutions where Epstein was preying on students made the same assurances even after his 2008 conviction. It’s not like parents couldn’t find all sorts of allegations about Epstein online at that point. Someone had to be assuring them:
Also note how Interlochen not only arranged for meeting between Epstein and the students he was sponsoring — likely meetings at the lodge — but he was even admitted into Interlochen’s President’s Club for high-level donors which entailed roles like “attending concerts, events and special meetings, identifying prospective students and providing counsel to the president on issues and policies of the institution.” Which is a reminder that playing this role as a student patron possibly served as a coverstory for his interactions with other underage girls:
And as we can see from the allegations of one of the victims, Epstein didn’t simply extend his generosity in the hopes that the students would comply with his abuse. He would make requests of them, like accompanying a high-profile person to a gathering in New York, and would threaten to rescind the sponsorships if they didn’t comply. Which raises the question of how many other instances there were of Epstein loaning one of ‘his girls’ out to someone as a kind of elite escort service:
Also keep in mind that we have been given zero explanation for why Epstein’s interest in Interlochen appears to have suddenly ended in 2003. He obviously wasn’t done with this form of patronage at that point. Why go from a President’s Club for high-level donors, with his own lodge, to no more scholarships after 2003? It’s the kind of sudden change in behavior that suggests there’s more to this story. Was Epstein caught abusing a student and allowed to quietly move on to other institutions? We don’t know, but it’s a reminder that we’re still looking at a cover up despite the flood of new documents. The kind of cover up that, if fully exposed, could shake the foundations of the world’s power structures.
WWIII here we come. It’s obviously the only option for a situation like this.