WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 64GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more (to KFJC). (This is a new feature–the old, 32GB flash­drive will not hold the new mate­r­i­al. Click Here to obtain Dav­e’s 46+ years’ work, com­plete through fall/early win­ter of 2026.)

NB: The Flash Dri­ve is now being updat­ed month­ly!

“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

Jef­frey Epstein Mug Shot
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia.com

COMMENT: On Sat­ur­day, June 27^th Dave again host­ed Ed Opper­man, long-time broad­cast­er, long-time pod­cast­er and licensed Pri­vate Inves­ti­ga­tor. In his capac­i­ty as a P.I., Ed has been on the front­lines of ‘L’Affaire Epstein.”

This talk explored more fea­tures of that bur­geon­ing sto­ry.

Speak­ing of the swirling accu­sa­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions, the obser­va­tion was made that Jef­frey Epstein is real­ly some­thing of a bumper-stick­er on the stretch lim­ou­sine of cor­rup­tion and intrigue that engulfs elite soci­ety.

In turn, Amer­i­cans bear con­sid­er­able scruti­ny as “The Good Ger­mans” who are tol­er­at­ing and even embrac­ing this lev­el of insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion. The “Epstein dis­clo­sures” have becom­ing some­thing of a par­lor game in much of Amer­i­can online soci­ety.

Much of the dis­cus­sion involved Ed’s dis­cus­sion of ques­tions posed by Pter­rafractyl, the bril­liant con­tribut­ing edi­tor of the Spit­firelist web­site.

Those ques­tions are repro­duced here:

* Ed has men­tion how a cor­rec­tions office the MCC was the source of an FBI tip.  There was also a cor­rec­tions offi­cer, offi­cer Michael Kearins, who called the FBI about sus­pi­cious mass paper shred­ding in the days fol­low­ing Epstein’s alleged sui­cide(https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftrs-1379–1380-team-trump-takes-the-field-parts-5-and‑6/#comment-388003) .  Could these be the same per­son?

As we saw, those alle­ga­tions of mass paper-shred­ding specif­i­cal­ly includ­ed the shred­ding of vir­tu­al­ly ALL inmate count slips at the MCC.  As we also saw, the guards on duty on in the Spe­cial Hous­ing Unit (SHU) where Epstein was being held on the evening of his ‘sui­cide’ repeat­ed­ly fal­si­fied the count slips that evening (https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-318-kidding-around-child-molestation-and-pedophilia-in-the-gop/#comment-336235).   Does Ed have any insights into those alle­ga­tions about mass paper shred­ding and the appar­ent destruc­tion of all of the count slips?

* Giv­en the fab­ri­ca­tion of the count slips and the video evi­dence indi­cat­ing that the guards had­n’t checked on Epstein at all that evening, if Epstein was killed around 10:40 pm while his body was dis­cov­ered at 6:30 am the next day, that would be an 8 hour peri­od before his body was dis­cov­ered.  At the same time, back in August of 2019, days after his death, CBS ran a report about how a source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion was indi­cat­ing that Epstein was dead UP TO two hours before his dis­cov­ery, putting a time of death around 4:30 AM (https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/sources-jeffrey-epstein-dead-up-to-2-hours-before-body-was-found/)  Has there been any updates on what the foren­sic evi­dence indi­cates regard­ing a more pre­cise time of death?   If Epstein was killed around 10:45 pm, that puts a 8 hour gap between his death and the dis­cov­ery of his body.  Should­n’t foren­sic evi­dence have been able to dis­tin­guish between a death at 10:45 pm vs 4:30 am?  Or is that a foren­si­cal­ly dif­fi­cult deter­mi­na­tion?

* The NY Times had a huge sto­ry a cou­ple of weeks ago, The Untold Sto­ry of Jef­frey Epstein’s Death (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/16/magazine/jeffrey-epstein-death-final-days.html), with a num­ber of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown details.  Among those new details are the claims by Epstein’s ini­tial SH cell­mate, Nicholas Tartaglione, about behav­ior by Epstein that would be con­sis­tent with sui­ci­dal ideations, includ­ing notes pur­port­ed­ly writ­ten by Epstein that Tartaglione found and kept as part of his own legal defense.  The Tartaglione angle to the Epstein sto­ry has long been an intrigu­ing one for a num­ber of rea­sons.  As we’ve seen, Epstein’s stay with Tartaglione includ­ed an inci­dent where Epstein was found uncon­scious in the cell.  Tartaglione, a for­mer police offi­cer fac­ing tri­al for mur­der, claimed Epstein tried to hang him­self while Epstein pro­vid­ed a series of dif­fer­ent expla­na­tions.  The inci­dent result­ed in Epstein being put in a sep­a­rate cell for psy­cho­log­i­cal obser­va­tion.  Tartaglione, in turn, was fac­ing sus­pi­cion he may have attacked his cell­mate, and so he had his lawyers make a request on July 25, 2019, that the secu­ri­ty footage for Epstein’s tier of the SHU be pre­served.  But in Decem­ber 2019, US Attor­neys told the judge in Tartaglione’s case that the footage did­n’t exist.  The next day, the jail claimed it found the video but it was for a dif­fer­ent part of the jail.  Then, the FBI con­clud­ed, “the request­ed video no longer exists on the back­up sys­tem and has not since at least August 2019 as a result of tech­ni­cal errors.”  And then they were told the footage no longer exist­ed on the back­up sys­tem since at least August 2019 due to tech­ni­cal rea­sons.  Tartaglione report­ed­ly want­ed to use the video to prove he was being help­ful and coop­er­a­tive, as he was fac­ing his own tri­al for mur­der (https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-318-kidding-around-child-molestation-and-pedophilia-in-the-gop/#comment-380677).  If there was destruc­tion of evi­dence going on, and it result­ed in the destruc­tion of a video that would have proven Tartaglione did­n’t attack Epstein, that destruc­tion imper­iled Tartaglione’s legal defense.  Does Tartaglione have a legal case for hav­ing the loss of that video some­how inves­ti­gat­ed and pros­e­cut­ed?  Could the alle­ga­tions of the inten­tion­al destruc­tion of the count slips com­bined with the loss of the video back­ups and all of the var­i­ous anom­alies around the han­dling of foren­sic evi­dence gath­ered after Epstein’s body was dis­cov­ered serve as pre­text for a new out­side inves­ti­ga­tion of MCC and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Epstein’s death?  In gen­er­al, who are the legal enti­ties with the pow­er to reopen the inves­ti­ga­tion into his death?  Is that large­ly left up to Con­gress at this point or are there legal avenues that the vic­tims or oth­ers like Tartaglione might have in forc­ing a new look at the cir­cum­stances of Epstein’s death?

Now, regard­ing that new NY Times report, we are told that Tartaglione kept the notes writ­ten by Epstein that seemed to hint at a sui­ci­dal mind­set and gave the notes to his lawyer for use in his own defense.  We’re also told the notes were sealed as part of Tartaglione’s defense and none of jail staff or even the inves­ti­ga­tors into Epstein’s death were even aware of the exis­tence of the notes until the NY Times peti­tioned the judge in Tartaglione’s case to release the notes this May.  Tartaglione’s lawyer explained his clien­t’s deci­sion to keep the notes hid­den from the pub­lic by argu­ing that they had no oblig­a­tion to assist in the Epstein inves­ti­ga­tion.  Does it makes sense that evi­dence of Epstein’s sui­ci­dal mind­set was used for Tartaglione’s defense but kept entire­ly hid­den from the Epstein inves­ti­ga­tion and yet was released after the New York Times request­ed it?   Is evi­dence pre­sent­ed in one legal case nor­mal­ly com­plete­ly com­part­men­tal­ized like that?

* As Ed has men­tioned, Efrain Reyes died of of COVID.  But there’s an inter­est­ing obser­va­tion of Reyes in the NY Times piece that must have been shared at some point.  Accord­ing to Reyes, the guards were on “eggshells” around Epstein, def­er­en­tial to him, and seem­ing­ly intim­i­dat­ed by him mak­ing a show of tak­ing down their names and threat­en­ing to talk to his lawyers.  Do we have a sense of why the staff felt so threat­ened by such an infa­mous per­son?  Is there any indi­ca­tion that Epstein actu­al­ly got the prison staff in some sort of trou­ble?

* The NY Times piece also includ­ed some addi­tion­al details on the fail­ure of the cam­eras.  We are told that a week pri­or to Epstein’s death, an MCC tech­ni­cian hap­pened to dis­cov­er a major hard­ware fail­ure that was result­ing in the cam­eras work­ing in real-time but not record­ing.  This would have been about a week after Tartaglione’s lawyers specif­i­cal­ly request­ed that the record­ings of the SHU cam­eras on night of Epstein’s alleged sui­cide attempt be retained.  This dis­cov­ery would have also come just a few days after Epstein was returned to the SHU fol­low­ing the sui­cide attempt scare.  The NY Times piece goes on to indi­cate that new hard dri­ves had been pur­chased to fix the issue but had­n’t installed them yet.  It’s a detail that indi­cates the prison staff knew the cam­eras weren’t being record­ed at the time of Epstein’s death.  Epstein’s death hap­pened at the end of this win­dow of blind­ness.  And as we’ve also seen, when Efrain Reyes was trans­ferred out of Epstein’s cell, he was­n’t giv­en a new cell­mate despite the orders that he must have one.  Does­n’t the fact that the staff knew the cam­eras weren’t record­ing at the time of the alleged sui­cide, and Epstein was­n’t giv­en a cell­mate despite orders to do so, serve as enough cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence to war­rant a new inves­ti­ga­tion?  More gen­er­al­ly, so much has been learned since the offi­cial inves­tiga­tive con­clu­sions were arrived at.  Does­n’t this flood of new infor­ma­tion call for a new inves­ti­ga­tion?

* One of the guards on duty the night of Epstein’s death, Tova Noel, recent­ly tes­ti­fied that she was def­i­nite­ly NOT the orange shape spot­ted ascend­ing the stairs to the tier where Epstein’s cell was locat­ed at 10:40pm on the last evening he was seen alive https://www.cbsnews.com/news/correction-officer-testifies-she-was-not-orange-shape-seen-outside-jeffrey-epstein-cell/  That orange blog mys­tery remains a major glar­ing unex­plained detail in Epstein’s alleged sui­cide (more on that here: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftrs-1379–1380-team-trump-takes-the-field-parts-5-and‑6/#comment-387350).   Noel and the oth­er guard who came on duty at mid­night that evening, Michael Thomas, were the only indi­vid­u­als ini­tial­ly charged in rela­tion to Epstein’s death, although those charges were dropped in exchange for their coop­er­a­tion.

The NY Times piece also rais­es ques­tions about Tova Noel’s claims that she was­n’t the orange blob seen at 10:40 pm.  First, the piece points out that only one set of keys exists for the doors to the tiers and if that orange blob entered Epstein’s tier they would have need­ed the keys.  Noel was seen on cam­era doing the rounds of check­ing the tiers short­ly after 10 pm, indi­cat­ing she had the keys.  And she isn’t account­ed for on cam­era at the time of 10:40 pm orange blob.  That was the basis for inves­ti­ga­tors con­clud­ing that the orange blob was like­ly Noel car­ry­ing orange linen up to the tier.  And yet, Noel insist­ed that was­n’t her and that she nev­er car­ried orange linen.  If Noel is lying, it’s hard to see why she would be lying about these details unless there was some­thing very impor­tant about that peri­od of time.  After all, admit­ting she was the orange blob would lift a lot of the sus­pi­cion around this case.  Does Ed have any idea why Tova Noel would lie about some­thing like that?  And is it known if it’s pos­si­ble to UNLOCK the doors to the tiers?  Could Noel, or some­one else with the keys, have left the door to the tier, and even Epstein’s cell, unlocked for a peri­od of time?

As we’ve seen, with the lay­out of the SHU and the con­ve­nient ‘break­down’ of all but two cam­eras, it was deter­mined that some­one could have poten­tial­ly entered the SHU, gone up those stairs to Epstein’s tier, and then left the SHU with­out ever being caught on cam­era, which raised the obvi­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty that the orange blob was some­one who almost did exact­ly that, per­haps a fel­low pris­on­er.  The offi­cial inves­tiga­tive con­clu­sion was that the orange blob was like­ly Noel because it could­n’t real­ly have been any­one else.  Does the fact that she is tes­ti­fy­ing under oath that it was def­i­nite­ly not her not raise major ques­tions about either the qual­i­ty of this inves­ti­ga­tion or the hon­esty of Noel’s tes­ti­mo­ny?

* Relat­ed to the mys­tery of the 10:45 pm orange blob, back in Feb­ru­ary, we got an answer to anoth­er mys­tery from the evening of Epstein’s alleged sui­cide.  That would be the iden­ti­ty of the indi­vid­ual who was seen leav­ing the SHU short­ly after mid­night:  mate­ri­als han­dler Ghit­to Bon­homme, a mate­ri­als man­ag­er whose shift end­ed at mid­night, at which point he was replaced by Michael Thomas, the guard who, like Tova Noel, faced ques­tion­ing about their con­duct that night.  Impor­tant­ly, we ini­tial­ly did­n’t even know Bon­homme had left dur­ing that minute because of the still-unex­plained ‘miss­ing minute’ fias­co, where the gov­ern­ment first lied about the miss­ing secu­ri­ty footage minute, indi­cat­ing that it was a nor­mal expect­ed thing, before even­tu­al­ly find­ing the minute and reveal­ing Bon­hom­me’s depar­ture.  At the same time, there’s a still no pub­lic answers regard­ing the iden­ti­ty of the indi­vid­ual who was caught on cam­era leav­ing the SHU at 12:05 am, min­utes lat­er.  We’ve been told that Bon­homme, like Tova Noel, worked an extend­ed shift and claims to have been nap­ping from 10PM to mid­night that evening.  The fact that Bon­hom­me’s depar­ture from the SHU was first obscured by that ‘miss­ing minute’ and we STILL don’t know the iden­ti­ty of the 12:05 am indi­vid­ual seems high­ly sus­pi­cious, espe­cial­ly giv­en that the orange blob mys­tery took place at 10:40 pm, while Bon­homme was alleged­ly nap­ping.  How is it that so much scruti­ny has been direct­ed towards Noel and Thomas and yet Bon­hom­me’s role in that evening is almost treat­ed as an after thought despite being the per­son whose depar­ture was ini­tial­ly obscured by the ‘miss­ing minute’?  And is there any real­is­tic pos­si­bil­i­ty of learn­ing the iden­ti­ty of the per­son who left at 12:05 am, min­utes after Bon­homme, or are details like that like­ly lost for­ev­er?

* As the NY Times piece also notes, while the back­up sys­tems for the cam­eras were bro­ken, there was  still the live feed that was being mon­i­tored in real-time in the MCC con­trol cen­ter, and cam­eras were cap­tur­ing the areas that some­one would have had to pass through if they were to take the now-iden­ti­fied route of enter­ing and exit­ing the SHU while not being caught on the two func­tion­ing cam­eras.  In oth­er words, the con­trol cen­ter would have also poten­tial­ly need­ed to be ‘in on it’ if there was a plot to assas­si­nate Epstein.  “The abil­i­ty for some­body to have killed him — it would have tak­en a mas­sive con­spir­a­cy that I can’t imag­ine some­body not find­ing out about it at this point,” Hugh Hur­witz, who was the head of the Bureau of Pris­ons at the time, said in an inter­view. “Too many peo­ple would have been involved.”  That’s the nar­ra­tive we’re get­ting.  And yet, it’s a nar­ra­tive that rais­es a rather obvi­ous ques­tion about how the MCC was oper­at­ing:  giv­en the myr­i­ad of oth­er secu­ri­ty laps­es, what rea­son to have to believe that the MCC’s con­trol tow­er was mean­ing­ful­ly watch­ing the live feeds of ALL the dif­fer­ent cam­eras at this time?  If any­thing, should­n’t we sus­pect that some over­worked staffer was on their third shift and sleep­ing through the whole thing?  How many cam­eras are there with live-feeds at any giv­en point?  Hun­dreds?  Thou­sands?

* One of the meta-ques­tions loom­ing over the whole sto­ry is just out ‘out there’ was Epstein’s lifestyle com­pared to that of oth­er bil­lion­aires.  How preva­lent is the use of high end call girls and pros­ti­tutes by the wealthy and influ­en­tial?  Is this a secret­ly com­mon thing?  If so, is there’s a huge con­cern about catch­ing vene­re­al dis­eases and a pri­or­i­ty on gain­ing access to ‘new’ young pros­ti­tutes?  Could the abuse of teenage girls been an exten­sion of an elite par­ty cul­ture where adult pros­ti­tu­tion is qui­et­ly rou­tine?

* The par­a­digm of Epstein as an elite black­mail oper­a­tion gen­er­al­ly assumes he first acquires the com­pro­mis­ing port­fo­lio on some­one pow­er­ful and then some­one pre­sum­ably exploits that lever­age for their ben­e­fit.  But there’s anoth­er sce­nario that involves offer­ing access to under­age girls that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly require black­mail: offer­ing access to these under­age girls AFTER the elite asso­ciate has already offered Epstein some­thing of val­ue, as a kind of reward.  Con­sid­er­ing Epstein’s rep­u­ta­tion for under­age sex par­ties, espe­cial­ly in the last decade of his life after he got that fed­er­al sweet­heart deal, it’s not incon­ceiv­able that he remained pop­u­lar in elite cir­cles in part because there was an inter­est in ‘par­ty­ing with Epstein’.  Is there any evi­dence of Epstein ever using invi­ta­tions to his social gath­er­ings as a kind of pay­ment in a quid pro quo sce­nario?

* Do we have a rea­son­able esti­mate of how much mon­ey Epstein was spend­ing on the recruit­ment and main­te­nance of his sup­ply of under­age women?  How much does such an oper­a­tion cost?  How much was being spent on direct pay­ments vs hous­ing and oth­er costs asso­ci­at­ed?  Giv­en all the still-unan­swered ques­tions about the nature of Epstein’s finan­cial wealth, is it pos­si­ble Epstein’s elab­o­rate, and pre­sum­ably very expen­sive, sex-life was serv­ing as a com­po­nent of some sort of mon­ey-laun­der­ing?  Ed has talked about the like­ly ori­gins of Epstein’s South­ern Trust Com­pa­ny in the ponzi scheme Epstein was run­ning with Stephen Hof­fen­berg.  Is there any evi­dence of mon­ey laun­der­ing in Epstein’s more recent past?  Could Epstein’s expen­sive lifestyle have been a part of some sort of ongo­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing agen­da?

* Stephen Hof­fen­berg endorsed Don­ald Trump in the 2016 cam­paign in even made some sort of bizarre pledge to raise more than $1 bil­lion for a pro-Trump super-PAC (https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftrs-1379–1380-team-trump-takes-the-field-parts-5-and‑6/#comment-388046).  That obvi­ous­ly nev­er hap­pened, but it raised the ques­tion:  how close were Trump and Hof­fen­berg in the 1980s when Trump and Epstein were infa­mous par­ty pals?