You know, it has gotten to the point where one honestly can’t be cynical enough. I thought I was pretty hard-bitten and un-shockable after two decades in the military, and a long snorkel through the vagaries of history (in a purely amateur capacity, meaning for a deep love of the topic rather than the commonly accepted imputation of being hap-hazard and imprecise) but the efforts of the Establishment Media Complex to tie Jeffrey “Humbert Humbert” Epstein to the Donald (AKA the God-Emperor) are … risible. It’s as of they are all channeling Veruca Salt, stamping their little feet, turning tantrum-red in the face, insisting that Orange-Man-Bad just has to be implicated, just because he once said something neutral-to-complimentary about a man who apparently occupied the same (elevated) social circles. Well, never mind that The Donald subsequently got Epstein thrown out of a golf club and banned from Mar-a-Largo for his tendency to perv on underage girls therein, and additionally was generous in cooperating with lawyers acting on behalf of the aforesaid perved-upon teenagers … Orange Man Bad, just because.
The tilt of this kind of coverage is so transparent; among those of us who have been paying attention to the Establishment Media Complex it seems like just another one of those torpedoes aimed at Trump circling around and holing those who have launched it well below the credibility waterline. And l’affaire Epstein is also reminiscent of the Harvey Weinstein imbroglio, wherein a lot of comfortably positioned Hollywood personalities were reminded forcibly that most ordinary Americans view a powerful boss demanding sexual services from underlings with considerable horror. In the case of Hollywood, though, I’d be willing to bet most of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual conquests engaged willingly with the man, and moreover, got what they wanted (juicy roles, fame and fortune) from the deal. But still – the spectacle of those personalities subsequently having the gall to hector the rest of us on an assortment of moral issues … splinter, logs, removal of same from eyes, anyone? Likely it’s been the same with Epstein, only in the political frame, rather than the strictly entertainment one. It’s already established that former president Bill Clinton was a more-than-frequent flier on Mr. Epstein’s personal private jet. The revelation that Mr. Epstein had many … many… many friends in political high places? Well, THAT should be interesting… Discuss as you will, and have insight into this.
PS – the reference to Humbert Humbert reminds me irresistibly of the verses in this small tome:
“Humbert gloats: His nymphet
Is “ineffable” (and yet
Effable as she can get):
Twelve year-old Lolita, kept
By this horny nympholept
Clear across the country schlepped… (middle verses omitted in the interests of space)
…By succumbing in his cell
Waiting trial. It’s just as well:
He has earned his private hell
Not for him apotheosis
In whose frog-eyed diagnosis
Life is just a pederoisis
I briefly tried to figure out what the heck pizzagate was a few years ago, and saw quickly it was clearly insane–quite reminiscent of Russiagate, actually. The Epstein/Clinton stuff that was a major part of it seemed real, but the parsing of email references to pizza was obviously madness. It seemed likely that it was “just” about sex, but now, who knows. I don’t know what would happen if there was an American Marc Dutroux scandal. I am quite certain though that the Clintons will never be allowed to suffer the consequences. They never have, so why would that change now?
Brian,
The seizure of Epstein’s extortion cache in his NYC home blows up the extortion power of a huge political/financial extortion network that has Pres. Trump as it’s primary enemy.
The capture of Epstein’s extortion cache is a major game changer in the current power alignments in DC and the NYC financial markets.
It terms of the game Go, a lot of the political board just got flipped color because there is no longer a single trigger finger on the extortion material. There are several.
Mueller’s role in providing House Dems more Trump investigation harassment O2 just ended with that flip. It matters not that Mueller was a pawn or rook for that. What matters is the political/legal/media potential energy is now all on Trump’s side.
For example, Congressional grandstanding instincts mean Mueller -can’t- testify next week without GOP Representative asking about the Epstein plea deal when he was head of the FBI.
The pedo-network is now back on its heels and it cannot communicate electronically with one another because Trump’s DoJ knows the names in the Epstein extortion cache in NYC and they don’t. Every name in those CD’s has an electronic surveillance warrant of one sort of another on them right now. And, likely those warrants happened just before the public announcement of the Feds getting the cache. This sort of game is standard Fed public corruption law enforcement/counter-intelligence SOP.
And note, by “media potential energy” I also mean that Trump’s DOJ appointees now control the timing of major “authorized” leaks concerning their pedo investigations, and can legitimately claim to be protecting the rights of defendants and unnamed co-conspirators in investigating and prosecuting unauthorized leaks. I.e., no insider can safely get away with unauthorized leaks. And media who publish unauthorized leaks can be investigated and forced to testify in the name of protecting the poor pedophile defendants and unnamed co-conspirators.
This is real power to reward friendly journalists and punish unfriendly ones. As well as controlling the news flow. Media campaigns hostile to the Trump administration can be interrupted by well-timed leaks about the pedo investigations, etc (sex scandals always have priority in headlines).
In short, Pres. Trump now controls the headlines through his re-election. No matter what the Tech-lords do to mess with Pres. Trump’s social media platforms.
Trent: I find it impossible to believe that someone could blackmail the likes of Bill Clinton and not have the goods stashed somewhere far beyond the reach of a single FBI raid. That makes no sense.
Did Epstein have a cache of blackmail photos somewhere? Was he running a kind of honey-trap over decades, targeting important players on the political and social/media scene?
Well … it will be interesting to find that out, won’t it?
All I’ve heard is that the files include possible child p0rn. Whether they are black mail material or trophies or both we may learn at some time. The path from random file to admission as evidence is not straight forward. I’m not going to hold my breath.
I, too, find it incredible that this was just laying around. Even Hilary knew that deleting files didn’t erase them. The program I use to deal with .zip files, 7-zip, lets me encrypt them with 256 bit AES encryption and I know of programs that allow up to 2048 bit algorithms. As far as I can tell, AES 256 is unbreakable now.
Even more incredible is that he apparently kept it at home at all. How many places are there to stash files on line? Pre-encrypted, you wouldn’t have to trust any provider.
Of course, any time you hear of one of these busts, you have to wonder how many more of these types are out there with even rudimentary knowledge that are never caught. That don’t leave the evidence sitting on their desktop when they take it to the shop.
Something I haven’t heard mentioned is that some of the “victims” also acted as procurers. They were minors but we live in a country where younger children have been tried as adults for murder. I assume that the three victims enumerated in the indictment have some sort of immunity deal. I suspect that one or more of either the “employees” or the “victims” came up against some sort of Federal beef that opened them up.
I expect that Epstein will get bail at some point. There will be monitoring and so on. I expect that he will, nevertheless, magically re-materialize beyond the reach of extradition.
Here’s an interesting article that speculates, with quite a lot of detail that epstein is Mossad.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-11/giraldi-did-pedophile-jeffrey-epstein-work-mossad
John Henry
The reality here is that we’re never going to know what the hell is really going on.
We can look at the outside shape of things, but the actual inner reality? Forget about it. We’ll never be told.
The thing I find most… Interesting, I guess, in all of this is how you can kind of connect the dots to outline so many possibilities that it’s not even funny. It’s like a kaleidoscope–Shake it, look through it, then shake it again: The view changes.
We can look at a few data points, and go “Hmmm…”. We know that Trump has hung around for years with this crowd, and that he likely knows where a lot of skeletons are buried. After his treatment since election, and now that the Mueller bolt is shot, I think we’re seeing “payback time” begin. Hillary tried to take him down, and now he’s about to return the favor, in spades. My guess is that we’ll see Bill indicted or otherwise ruined publicly before the election in 2020, with Hillary as collateral damage. Who knows who else is going down, on this one–I think that this is just the beginning of the Trump counter-strike, and he’s going to be sitting in the catbird’s seat in the White House looking simon-pure and innocent as the driven snow, all while the idiots who tried taking him down twist and burn in the fires they started.
Of course, you shake the kaleidoscope again, and it’s going to look totally different. I don’t think we’re going to ever really know what the real deal was with Epstein, or what else our “elites” have been getting up to. My guess is it is a lot worse than we know, or can imagine. It’s going to be an interesting election, that’s for damn sure.
Epstein is not a pedophile. This is important. If conservatives keep misidentifying him as one, I fear some unfortunate consequences.
Pedophiles desire pre-pubertal children. This is not Epstein’s kink; he likes his girls to be as young as possible but fully nubile. The correct term is “ephebophile”.
The Left has a long history of triggering conservatives into self-discrediting moral panics (“Rock and roll is the devil’s music”). It also has a strong internal contingent that would like to normalize pedophilia. (The real thing, not Epstein’s creepy ephebophilia.) They’ve been biding their time in order to get adult-on-adult homosexuality fully normalized as battlespace prep, but you see a few trial balloons go up occasionally in places like Salon.
Don’t give them maneuvering room. Make the distinctions that matter. Epstein’s behavior is repulsive because we judge some postpubertal humans to be too psychologically immature to give adult consent, but it’s nowhere near as evil as the sexual abuse of actual children and the two should not be confused.
There are real rings of pedophile monsters out there, notably in Hollywood where sexual abuse of child actors has a long and sordid history. Don’t spend your credibility in an overheated fling at Epstein lest you find you’re out of allies when the real monsters need to be taken down.
I’d love it if Trump was in as much control of the narrative as Trent suggests but I think this is mostly poor strategic thinking on the part of his enemies. The most obvious target here is Acosta due to the plea deal, and I don’t know if I’d want to go much farther with wheels within wheels speculation. If MeToo has shown anything it’s that TDS really blinds the Democrats to the second order effects of the attacks they make on Trump. It might even be that they really aren’t that concerned with anything other than simply keeping the pot boiling. Ramping up the anixety of white suburban women is a major part of their electoral strategy, and threatening their daughters is a good way to do it.
Mr. Raymond: At this point we don’t know anything for sure, and can’t rule anything out. I mean, have you seen that temple thing? That thing is real, and I’ve never seen or heard an explanation for what it is, except for stuff from the pizzagate crowd that seems impossible to believe, but who can tell anymore?
I do agree with Kirk that the “truth” will never be allowed to come out, since it will obliterate the system. The one caveat to that is that the entire system is trying to destroy Trump, but he has all the power, and really no reason not to go full Sampson on all of them.
They have Epstein dead to rights on hundreds of counts of Child Porn.
The questions for the early ‘oght DoJ and FBI leadership that arise from that fact are career ending.
As in:
If these photos do date back to the 2002-5 period, though, think about what this says about the original prosecution of Epstein. That would suggest that prosecutors never executed a proper search warrant before dealing the case into a misdemeanor. Alex Acosta will have more questions to answer if that turns out to be the case.
This case was treated exactly as the Hillary E-mail case was by the Deep State by many of the same people.
There is no burying this case now. Epstein dying in federal custody is the only way it gets “buried” this time.
Pres. Trump owes none of the people that Epstein dirtied anything.
“Forget about it Jake; it’s Chinatown.”
This is a very useful comment from an e-mail list I’m on:
Everybody knew. All the elites knew who other Elites were in the photos. It’s been The Sword of Damocles blackmail for a very long time. Nobody actually uses it for blackmail. It’s just a known thing. If you’re with us nothing happens. If you decide to switch sides though, we’ve got all these pictures of you having sex with little girls.
Now the feds have a bunch of it and it is completely useless.
That would be the real problem.
Now that they are out it’s out. The power vanishes like a mirage. If there are others in the pictures their power obviously vanishes, soft power assuredly, hard power nearly as assured and likely most economic.
For someone probably not in the pictures this is a minor disaster.
Blackmail can only be used once. The threat is more useful than the use. You can hold a single shot weapon to a person’s head forever. You can only kill them once.
In this case assuming there are other elites in the photos it’s even worse.
Someone else will be pulling the trigger.
And all that power vanishes without any control by someone or someones.
So sad.
See my sad face.
It’s not hard to see some of the FBI/DOJ types from Mullergate taking one look at those pictures, turning white and evacuating the area while they waited for an air strike to sanitize it for our protection. With Hilary in office, the evidence would be like a mine field guarding a secret base. Now, not so much.
A first class conspiracy theory would be that this is all to prop up CNN.
Christopher B
For all that Pres. Trump plays the figure of a brazen jerk publicly, he can be incredibly subtle, multi-level and long term in his messaging.
Case in point, how the “open secret” of Epstein’s extortion cache was linked by him to Hillary’s e-mails in the 2016 elections. Specifically via Trump’s debate comment about Hillary that she should go to jail over them.
For which I’ve saved this three plus years old comment from the Free Republic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3487057/posts
“I have a good reliable friend who was talking to a retired Fed LEO who is still working in the law enforcement field in D.C. vicinity. The retired fed was talking about the pedophile angle in this whole FBI email fiasco. It appears to be common knowledge in the federal law enforcement community, at least in the D.C. area that there are many prominent politicians & VIP’s who may be implicated in the Epstein pedophile perversion excursions.”
The general public thought it was all about national security lapses. For those “in the know” regards Epstein and how DC really ran, there was a completely different message.
Which, given the FBI’s electronic surveillance of Pres-elect and President Trump, was received as intended by the Deep State.
The thing is, the Deep State does factions too.
Long time Law men in the sexual victims units — Federal, State & Local — have a special hate bordering on serial killer behavior for politically powerful pedophiles.
The Trump presidential victory in 2016 gave them a licence to hunt their preferred prey on a much larger scale.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXIVM
The roll up of the Epstein pedo network will have a whole lot of impressive fall out as the child p–n the Feds just seized not only destroys the Omerta style cohesion of the Deep State. It means they have a lever on Epstein to get everything from him.
Specifically, child p–n pictures and video means Epstein goes into the general population in the Federal prison system unless he gives the Feds everything. He has already gotten an ultimatum from the Feds along the lines of the following:
“Talk and you won’t have any cellmates. Don’t talk and you will.”
There are somethings that we do know about Epstein — names of other powerful people in his dirty list.
While it was quickly “memory holed,” Epstein’s little black book was leaked in 2011. Gawker.com reported it was filled with powerful celebrity names including actors Alec Baldwin, Ralph Fiennes, Dustin Hoffman, and Elizabeth Hurley. Mick Jagger and RUPERT MURDOCH are also listed in the book, as are politicians Tony Blair, Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, and Ted Kennedy.
See:
https://miami.cbslocal.com/2019/07/08/sex-trafficking-charges-against-jeffrey-epstein-shines-new-light-on-high-profile-friends/
Not every person on the Gawker list is going to be captured on digital media with young girls (or young boys) but there are still a lot whose past histories and publicity make it highly likely they are.
This category of “publicly identified” likely includes the following —
o Bill & Hillary Clinton
o Prince Andrew
o Kevin Spacey
o Most of Bear Stern’s early ‘oght list of big clients
o A number of now in mid-to-high level supervision Secret Service agents who were on Bill & Hillary’s protective detail.
o Former House Speaker Hastert.
Since Hastert was convicted as a pedo. I expect he was very much part of the larger Epstein Pedogate network for political fund raising reasons.
I expect current Speaker Pelosi is “knowledgeable” as was Speaker Ryan for the same reasons.
Pelosi’s daughter coming out and saying what she did is an utter tell in that regards.
As in, all the Democratic operatives in and around the Clinton foundation are either enablers or pedo-dirty.
I’m expecting waves of retirements and suicides in DC and in Wall Street very soon.
The leaks over the next few weeks and months are going to be multi-gallon brain bleach worthy.
Ditto ESR on the difference between ephebophiles (excuse: “But I totally believed she was 18!”) and paedophiles (excuse: “Toddlers deserve sex too!”). Though, as Brian notes, we don’t really know what-all Epstein and has various associates were getting up to.
Now, if we’re going full tinfoil, I randomly tossed out the suggestion on my own blog yesterday that Epstein might have gotten the super-favored treatment last time around because he was sharing his blackmail material with the FBI and the “Intelligence Community.” Which ought to be unthinkable, of course, but in the Hoover era it would have been entirely thinkable.
Eric,
If this is true:
I randomly tossed out the suggestion on my own blog yesterday that Epstein might have gotten the super-favored treatment last time around because he was sharing his blackmail material with the FBI and the “Intelligence Community.”
What incentive does Pres. Trump have to keep this going given his, his family’s and his friend’s treatment by the intelligence community?
As opposed to letting the Sword of Damocles drop?
When it comes to revenge. Pres. Trump is in the same class as the character Inito Montoya hunting the six-fingered man from the film Princess Bride.
This is why I’m expecting a wave of suicides and retirements by some -formerly- powerful people in DC.
Pedophilia vs. ephebophilia is a distiction without a difference when you are talking about him forcibly assaulting (including foribly raping) girls as young as 12. Sorry.
Trent — I think you’re being too optimistic.
Note that Trump does not “have” Epstein’s cache of photos — the FBI does. J. Edgar Hoover supposedly collected troves of dirt on many prominent people and is said to have used it for leverage. The contents of Anthony Wiener’s laptop — reportedly full of disgusting things — disappeared into the bowels of the FBI. Have you heard of any action taken based on that? I hear crickets.
I think the material seized at Epstein’s house will also mostly disappear into the FBI’s archives for later leverage. Hoover’s use of dirt has a long history within the FBI, and I think they just received an incredible windfall.
Nothing changes in D.C. Unless some Dudley Do-Rights have taken over the FBI (doubtful), the FBI will dole out just enough material to make a few splashy cases to satisfy the media (both left and right), then it will sit on the rest until needed to sway decisions inside the Beltway. Lawyers are involved, and we will never hear the full story.
The FBI needs to be dis-established. The nation needs something new.
I think the material seized at Epstein’s house will also mostly disappear into the FBI’s archives for later leverage. Hoover’s use of dirt has a long history within the FBI, and I think they just received an incredible windfall.</i
I agree with this. Trump’s control of DOJ is one level deep in an institution with 50 levels.
I wonder if Assange has any of this stuff ? Seth Rich was probably killed for giving Assange more than Hillary’s or DNC’s emails.
Acosta’s gone. Guess we’ll see how long this stays in the news.
re: FBI, it is mind boggling to me that their headquarters is named after J Edgar Hoover. Absolutely despicable, and basically rubbing it in every American’s face that they are not bound by any standards of decency. They should 100% be shut down.
I believe that the filth and corruption in DC is a classic Mexican standoff. The way the standoff is broken is by the insertion of an outside party, in this case Trump. Of course what’s happened is that all parties involved are now focusing their fire on the new guy. Trump has survived their shots so far, but they’re not going to go down easy.
Acosta:
His account of doing what he could to get any charges at all after being told to ignore Epstein seems logical. Even assuming that he believed that Epstein was an intelligence asset and untouchable, getting him registered as a sex offender is at least *something*. Yes, I know he’s going to try to cast himself in the best light possible.
The media and democrats going after Acosta as a connection to Trump could be useful in keeping attention on the case and eyes averted from the frequent fliers, at least for a moment. Certainly the purpose is to keep eyes averted from the frequent fliers, it just might be useful in some sense. And Acosta goes down and gets fired and is “gone” then is Epstein also going to be “gone” from scrutiny?
Weinstein:
Would have gotten a pass, just the same as every other time anyone complained about him. He promised to dedicate his wealth to gun control as a way to pay for that pass. He expected that to work. The only reason it didn’t is because people were so focused on OrangeManBad that they lost their minds.
Those of us who recall Epstein from the news a few years ago figured that he got a pass because of who he’d take down with him. Keeping people focused on OrangeManBad means it’s more likely that he’ll face real consequences.
Teenagers not Pedophilia:
True enough. But it just means that you’re a different sort of pervert. Your kink isn’t prepubescent children, your kink is the danger of the criminal transgression you’re committing with impunity.
Oh, and the intelligence asset thing…
I don’t believe it for a moment. It seems like an obvious hint to imply to get investigators to back off of looking into something that might implicate the President of the United States.
We don’t know much. What we do know comes mainly through the usual media leaks — which means that most of what is out there is Leftie mis-understanding, Leftie mis-information, and just plain Leftie nonsense. There are obvious political axes being ground, so this is probably one of those occasions that we should all be cautious and skeptical, and wait to see what emerges.
What puzzles me about this affair is that Mr. Epstein had been a big Democrat contributor in our pay-to-play neo-fascist former Republic. When the original charges were filed in Florida, a bevy of Democrats returned campaign contributions from him. This raises the obvious question — Which powerful Democrat had Mr. Epstein pissed off? And over what issue?
As an aside, I agree with Eric S. Raymond that the use of the term “pedophile” is inappropriate — probably simply battlespace preparation by our Far-Left Media (Epstein Man Bad, and Probably Orange). There was a long article in a magazine (probably Atlantic Mag?) back at the time of the original prosecution over the charges in Florida. It was fairly clear from the article that the underage girls involved were not innocent virgins who had been playing with dolls in their backyards before being snatched against their will by evil pedophiles. They were volunteers; they lied about their ages; they did not do anything with Mr. Epstein that they had not already done dozens of times before with various boyfriends — and they willingly traded their favors for money. Mr. Epstein’s failure was apparently believing that sexually-active teenage girls would be honest with him about their ages. It can be very difficult to tell; think of Cori Gauff at Wimbledon — who would think she was a 15 year old girl? If we had been told she was 25, it would have been quite believable.
“What we do know comes mainly through the usual media leaks”
Actually, no, what “we” “know” has mostly been through a few scattered factual events from years ago that no one except pizzagate enthusiasts and other denizens of strange corners of the internet ever tried to tie together. We were all told that those people were just lunatics and should be ignored. Only now has the story burst open in the public eye and there is a desperate attempt to spin things for the benefit of certain powers that be. Personally, I’m going to give more benefit of the doubt to the internet crazies, and wait and see. I fully expect that there are unspeakable horrors buried beneath the surface, and that we won’t be allowed to know anything but the bare minimum, just enough to point the finger at whoever ends up losing the behind-the-scenes power struggles going on now.
Brian,
You assume there was “a single FBI raid”. Don’t.
Epstein had been an FBI/DOJ target lots of times over many years, and had been continuously under surveillance for a considerable period immediately prior to his arrest. Including electronic surveillance.
He had multiple stashes. I suspect the FBI didn’t get all of those on this occasion, but I am sure they got a lot of those.
Tom: I don’t think that really eliminates the problem though–so they gradually rolled up his blackmail stashes, a la Harry Potter? That wouldn’t work, you’d have to do it all simultaneously. It’s hard for me to get the blackmail story to really make sense if you think about it for two seconds. It kind of does make more sense to think he was some sort of front man for a foreign intelligence agency.
Trent,
The little black book that I think you are talking about, at least a little black book, was publicly released this week. Phone#s and addresses are redacted but it ran 40-50 pages as I recall.
It was actual pictures of the pages, not a transcription.
I can probably find it again if it is important. I took a quick glance through it but didn’t really look in any depth.
A question to all re the pictures. Are the girls identified? If not, how does one prove they are underage? How can one, from pictures, tell the difference between a 14 year old and an 18 years old? More importantly, how does one convince a jury?
If I were on a jury I would be extremely reluctant to convict a person on the basis that the girl looks underage in a photo. I would have to have some evidence. Like a name and birth certificate or some such.
John Henry
Nadler just announced this morning that Mueller’s testimony will be put off a week until July 24. While Mueller is supposed to be testifying about his investigation, he will likely be asked about Epstein too.
Rex at Quadverum had an interesting post the other day about what he calls “Spygate” or the British spying on US citizesn from the British embassy in DC. The ambassador that just got fired, Darroch, used to be British intelligence Sept 2015. (PM David Cameron’s National Security Advisor from 2012 until 7 September 2015) Became ambassador Jan 28 2016, just after the inauguration.
Anyway, Rex thinks the July 24 date is important.
SPYGATE.
And a date, looming on the horizon:
24 July, 2019.
What’s being hidden from the general public is Darroch’s likely role in SpyGate, Obama & Clinton’s operation to illegally destroy the Trump Presidential campaign and rig the 2016 Presidential election.
We will get to that in a moment.
But Darroch also knows that a key date is just around the corner, when any hope of his protection from Downing Street will disappear. The date?
24 July, 2019 – the day when Theresa May steps down and a new UK Prime Minister, almost certainly Boris Johnson, takes over.
https://www.quodverum.com/2019/07/191/trump-s-revenge-panic-on-the-streets-of-london-.html
Is the Mueller testimony being rescheduled for this day just by coincidence? It is certainly possible. OTOH, there could be some fireworks, or stuff that the media can play up as fireworks, that might bump British Spygate off the front pages for as long as needed.
John Henry
Brian, you don’t get it and never will. Epstein kept the photos and records for personal sexual reasons, not blackmail. Blackmail was merely a happy side effect.
Tommy,
The person sexual reasons seems sketchy. The more we learn about Epstein the more likely it seems that this was primarily a major league blackmailing operation. Probably at least partly for money. But perhaps also for US and/or Israeli intelligence to get power over people.
Epstein was a college dropout yet somehow he got hired as a physics(?) teacher at a very tony private Manhattan school. How did he get a teaching license from the state without a degree? I know that nowadays many, most? states will only grant a provisional license with a BA. To get a permanent license you need a Masters. Even assuming no licensing problem, why would the school give him a job? It’s not like there aren’t millions of other qualified candidates.
Maybe he had something on the headmaster? Who was Barr’s father, I think.
Then he goes to Bear Stearns and, though he has no banking/finance expertise is promoted to partner in 4 years. Was he really that good? He was then asked to leave.
Starts his own firm and will not talk to anyone with less than a $billion to place with him. (Total market in the 90s, less than 100 people) One client that we know of (Wexner), no noticeable trading activity, very little staff. One theory is that he was financed by outside money like intelligence money. Another is that he would blackmail people into placing money with him, put it in an index fund then charge them exorbitant fees. This at least has the advantage of looking legal as opposed to straight blackmail.
His girlfriend/significant other/commonlaw wife/pimp was Ghislane Maxwell. She is the daughter of Rupert Maxwell who was a known, as much as anyone can know these things, Mossad agent also of very sketchy background.
No, Tom, there is something way bigger in play than someone who just gets off on dirty pictures. This is about money, intelligence or both. My bet is on both.
John Henry
Oh, and the intelligence asset thing…
I don’t believe it for a moment. It seems like an obvious hint to imply to get investigators to back off of looking into something that might implicate the President of the United States.
zerohedge has a suggestion that he might have had Mossad connections but that is said of every Jew who has some scandal.
I agree that the “fortune” he is supposed to have has very sketchy sources. I would not rule out a blackmail connection.
His girlfriend/significant other/commonlaw wife/pimp was Ghislane Maxwell. She is the daughter of Rupert Maxwell who was a known, as much as anyone can know these things, Mossad agent also of very sketchy background.
Does Murdoch have a thing about young girls?
Pedophilia vs. ephebophilia is a correct distinction among what we’re calling, this year, “the front row kids”. But the general public treats all persons under legal age as kids. Don’t let the (18 year old) kids buy cigarettes. Don’t force the (26 year old) kids off their parents health insurance. Don’t feel bad for George Zimmerman, what about the (17 year old, 5′-11″, 160 pound) kid he shot? The media calls them children.
As the age of consent is even younger, calling a participant a “kid” or “child” is not out of line in common usage.
I see little public value in lexical distinctions about why which pervs pick out what victims.
I don’t think an individual could blackmail the likes of Bill Clinton. I just don’t see that happening. Only a state operation could do that.
I hesitate to point the figure at Mossad because most of those I’ve seen doing that are the comment section nazis (literally) at zerohedge and twitter. But it does not seem impossible.
The Q then becomes, would Obama tolerate an Israeli program like that? To keep the Clintons in check, I think he just might.
And would Trump burn an Israeli program like that? To take the Clintons down, I think he just might.
What’s being hidden from the general public is Darroch’s likely role in SpyGate, Obama & Clinton’s operation to illegally destroy the Trump Presidential campaign and rig the 2016 Presidential election.
That’s what I gathered from the whole incident. The leaks weren’t diplomatic discussions but situational updates on their covert operation.
I hesitate to point the figure at Mossad because most of those I’ve seen doing that are the comment section nazis (literally) at zerohedge and twitter. But it does not seem impossible
He flew Prince Andrew around, didn’t he? Maybe he was with MI6. They seem to have their grubby hands rummaging around a lot of surprising places lately.
John Henry wrote: “No, Tom, there is something way bigger in play than someone who just gets off on dirty pictures.”
So what was the trigger for blowing this case open again? It seems like that is the aspect worth considering — and NO! We can dismiss out of hand the hypothesis that the trigger was some crusading prosecutor who wanted to save sexually-active teenagers from making some money. Who expects to benefit from bringing this case back into the limelight?
One hypothesis is that this is another Democrat Establishment mis-fire. They think they can get at President Trump, and are too stupid to realize that they will first have to blow up a whole bunch of Democrat politicians and super-wealthy Democrat funders. While that cannot be ruled out, it is never good to have a hypothesis based simply on the principals acting stupidly.
English interference in the US? Israeli interference in the US? But how do they benefit by bringing this case out into the open?
It is difficult to answer the question — Cui bono? The best interpretation at the moment is, as John Henry suggests, that something much bigger is going on far behind the scenes. And at the moment, we are being distracted with salacious trivia; we are not hearing about the important stuff, whatever it is.
One hypothesis is that this is another Democrat Establishment mis-fire. They think they can get at President Trump, and are too stupid to realize that they will first have to blow up a whole bunch of Democrat politicians and super-wealthy Democrat funders
This goes along with Richard Fernandez circling torpedo hypothesis.
Trump may have literally driven a lot of these people insane. What we may have here is the Montagnards thinking they have the Girondins just where they want them.
Another possibility, of course, is the Wiley Coyote theory.
Epstein did this because he has major sexual issues, aka he’s a pervert. Keeping the photos and videos on the scale he has is a means of expressing those issues. He entirely fits the profile of a certain kind of pervert which happens to be entirely criminal. I.e., he’s a sex criminal who can’t stop doing it.
His wealth and power let him protect himself to a large degree, including use of photos and videos of rich powerful dudes doing the same thing for the same reasons.
But he took the photos and videos in the first place to express his perversion.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
Tom H: “But he took the photos and videos in the first place to express his perversion.”
OK, let’s stipulate to that. Now — who expects to benefit from dragging all that material into the public domain at this precise moment in history? Especially since we can guess that a lot of well-known names will be embarrassed by the disclosures. And even more well-known names will have to acknowledge that they knew this was going on and said nothing.
Until we learn who expects to benefit, all we have is a titillating story about sexually-active teenage girls lying about their ages in order to get paid for practicing the world’s oldest profession.
There is another sidelight on Epstein’s money.
Maybe it really was blackmail.
How such a scheme could hypothetically work has been laid out in detail in a thread on the anonymous Twitter feed of @quantian1. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but in summary it is a rough blueprint for how a devious aspiring hedge-fund manager could blackmail rich people into investing with him without raising too many flags.
Kass and former hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson both emailed the thread around in investing circles and both quickly discovered that their colleagues found it quite convincing. “This actually sounds very plausible,” Tilson wrote in an email forwarding the thread to others.
“He somehow cajoled these guys to invest,” says Kass, speaking of hypothetical blackmailed investors who gave Epstein their money to invest, but managed to keep their names private.
The fact that Epstein’s fund is offshore in a tax haven — it is based in the U.S. Virgin Islands — and has a secret client list both add credence to the blackmail theory.
Gavin,
Re-read the last three paragraphs in Trent’s first post in this thread.
Plus, as Trent also noted, there are lot of honest federal lawmen incensed about this who are no longer suppressed by their crooked superiors due to Trump being President, and are now finally able to act on the information concerning well-connected pedo and white slavery rings they’ve had for generations.
It will be difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate between the two reasons why the lid is coming off now. Both are present.
English interference in the US? Israeli interference in the US? But how do they benefit by bringing this case out into the open?
OK, we’ve seen a lot of heuristics already- Occam’s Razor, cui bono, Wile E. Coyote, the blind leading the blind. Here’s my offering, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.
We have two already, the Steele Dossier/Papadopoulis Affair and the Darroch leaks. We now look for the third. If Epstein is no. 3 then we don’t need a narrative we need defensive countermeasures. Save the explanations for later.
Tom,
I think you are saying that he is a pervert (collecting pictures) on this scale because he has money.
But where does his money come from? He doesn’t have inherited wealth. His hedge fund, the supposed source, seems sketchy in the extreme with no clients, few employees, no visible trading etc. It doesn’t seem likely to be generating much.
I’m 180 from you. I am convinced that he has money because of the pictures. He could still be a pervert too, of course.
The thread Michael k referenced above is the same one I saw the other day. it was pretty convincing in laying out the blackmailing scheme. Lots of checkable facts.
John Henry
Mike k,
I guess you were asking if daughter Murdoch has a thing for young girls since the father is long dead.
I don’t know if she is sexually into girls. I don’t think I’ve seen that. She could be, of course.
She is, allegedly, into procuring young girls, though.
Besides that she has an interesting background. Bing her.
And, just by way of no harm, she was a guest at Chelsea Clintons wedding.
John Henry
Sorry,
I meant maxwell, not murdoch.
Were you talking about murdoch, mike? The still living media mogul?
How does he enter into it?
John Henry
For Epstein’s associates money and proximity to power are as likely motivators as sexual proclivity. Don’t discount that Maxwell’s sexual motivation, if there is one, could be Epstein himself. It wouldn’t be particularly uncommon.
Epstein obviously needed an age appropriate companion for social occasions. Even in his circles, 14 year old dates would start to raise eyebrows.
If he stays in jail, it will be interesting to see if he can maintain his ongoing costs with this handicap. I hope that the USA is making sure that the houses and such that he is pledging for his bond actually belong to him. The same for his brother and “friends” that have offered to put up bail. I would hate to have to depend on his being willing to spend the rest of his life in prison rather than betray a relationship.
Regards the ideas of “Pedophilia vs. Ephebophilia,” Pouncer, Tom Holsinger and Gavin Longmuir have beat this particular horse to death. I view it as a form of pendantic elite versus prole virtue signaling at best or a form of Leftie “battlefield preparation” at worse.
What is going on now is that the Espstein network is doing everything it can to get out of the line of fire, as a small number will go to court and a larger number of close enabler’s will be exposed — See Acosta.
This means the majority of the network is now operating on a very short/narrow concern personal horizon that has nothing to do with the Presidential election cycle. Most of their discretionary campaign contribution money and time is now blocked out to deal with the Epstein arrest fall out.
See various UK Daily Mail articles laying out Prince Andrew’s involvement with Epstein -after- his conviction as well as the fact that the Florida AG office involved with Epstein’s conviction told New Mexico that Epstein was not on the convicted sex offender list because the the under age victims were actually over age.
Epstein has/had a ranch in New Mexico so the New Mexico State AG office had to ask…and got lied to to protect Epstein.
I’ll note now that Sec. of Labor Acosta is gone from the Trump Administration and Mueller’s public testimony to Congress was “delayed” a week.
The fact that the “Ahoy” crowd — Kirk Schlicter’s nick name for National Review RINO’s — first came out 4-square supporting Acosta. And now have Andrew McCarthy saying Epstein’s immunity deal means no prosecution — despite said plee deal requiring the full turn in of all extortion/pedo materials — tells me exactly -WHAT- the old guard “Conservatives” were.
That is, they were knowledgeable at best. And, given Former House Speaker Hastert’s pedo conviction, some had to be close personal enabler’s, with a number of Congressmen and staff being active participants at worse.
Think in terms of the public court documents laying out Catholic bishop’s and their staff’s history of dealing with pedo priests and you will not be far wrong.
The next round of “battlespace preparation” by the pedo-hunting lawmen and their media contacts is already under way with the release of data as to whom Epstein was giving money too in order to kill the “soft power” of the Epstein pedo network elites.
Senate Minority Leader Schumer and a couple of Ivy League schools have been targeted in regard taking Epstein money already.
anonymous,
Collection of sexualized photos and videos of the objects of sexual obsession (children for pedophiles, pubescent girls (ages 11-14) for Epstein’s kind of deviancy) is a DEFINING characteristic of some kinds of sex criminals.
Epstein didn’t do it because he had money. He didn’t need money to do it. Lots of poor sex criminals make such collections.
Instead they all collect sexualized photos of the objects of their sexual obsessions as expressions of their obsessions.
Epstein’s money, to the extent it was related to his photo/video collections, simply made it easier for him to amass and store bigger and “better” collections than less wealthy perverts.
Epstein’s money was entirely responsible for him being able to get away with his criminal behavior for most of his life. Blackmail had very little to with it. Bribes always work much better. Epstein’s bribes were generally not financial. Instead they were mostly access to his girls who, as noted by others in this thread, were often willing “victims”.
Regards the FBI burying Epstein’s digital media…remember the FBI and the DoJ does factions as much as the political parties.
The ‘serial killer behavior’ pedo-hunters in law enforcement tend to live in the public corruption units at the Federal, state and local law levels.
These are the guys in the DoJ’s SNDY prosecution office and local FBI office who took down Congressmen Anthony Weiner, despite his ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
And this time out with Epstein, the FBI Counter-Intelligence crowd has poisoned itself with both President Trump and Attorney General Barr.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the the SNDY Public Corruption Unit has a case of the a** for both FBI Counter-Intelligence and the DoJ National Security section for their interference with that case.
Now the pedo-hunters in the DoJ and FBI have the opportunity not only to not only do their jobs, but to take down their DC based bureaucratic rivals a dozen or so pegs in terms of turf.
The SNDY Public Corruption Unit may hate the ground that Pres. Trump walks upon.
However, they just gave the Trump Organization a clean bill of health on Russian Collusion immediately after they got the Epstein files.
You all can work out the implications of that double coincidence yourselves.
Grrr…this:
The ‘serial killer behavior’ pedo-hunters in law enforcement tend to live in the public corruption units at the Federal, state and local law levels.
Should have read:
The ‘serial killer behavior’ pedo-hunters in Federal law enforcement tend to live in the public corruption units. State and local law levels see this more in sexual victim units, there being more SVU’s than public corruption units.
I agree with Trent that arguing over the exact right Greek term is unproductive, especially when dealing with the MSM that seems increasingly challenged with everyday English syntax and grammar.
I think that one of the attractions of both perversions is manipulating and exploiting vulnerable individuals, both physically and especially intellectually. It’s even possible that his proclivities are for much younger victims which he compromises by preying on victims old enough to accept payment, giving the illusion of consent.
I’ve got a list in my mind that I wouldn’t mind seeing perp-walked. This has all the hallmarks of being a long drawn out affair. A lot of legal technicalities and endless wrangling behind closed doors for years. That’s if the case proceeds. It’s not impossible for it to suddenly evaporate much like the first one. The howl would be deafening, but remember, the answer to the question: “Have you no shame?” is always NO. It might be the log that broke the camel’s back or not.
Trent — with all due respect, we should not get too hung up on the “pedo” angle in this strange iceberg of bureaucratic infighting.
Mohammed (PBUH) got married to a girl at the age of 9, but apparently waited till she was a ripe old 14 before consummating the marriage. In the 19th Century, it was not at all uncommon for girls to get married at the age of 16, or even younger. Our modern so-concerned Leftists have made a dog’s breakfast out of ages of consent — in many jurisdictions, females can get a drivers license (dangerous to other people!) at the age of 16, can vote (really dangerous to other people!) at the age of 18, can drink alcohol at the age of 21, but need to look 25 to buy cigarettes. At more or less any age, a teenage girl can get an abortion without her parents being informed — her body, her choice. There does not seem to be any biological reason for today’s politicians to pick 18 as the random age at which a teenage girl suddenly develops the ability to consent to sexual intercourse — especially since these days many teenage females have already been sexually active for 3 or 4 years by the time they hit 18. You & I may think that is unfortunate and feel sorry for those young women, but that is reality.
Just like “Feminists” have debased the word “rape” by applying it to cases in which there is not even any physical contact, Leftists now want to debase “pedophilia” by applying it to females under the age of 18 who knew exactly what they were doing when they voluntarily participated in sex-for-money, and lied about their ages into the bargain. Let’s not encourage those Leftists by going along with their Orwellian abuse of language.
If it later emerges that Mr Epstein did in fact engage in real pedophilia, then deservedly let loose the Hounds of Hell. For now, we should concentrate on trying to learn about the 90% of this strange iceberg that lies below the surface.
}}} Well, never mind that The Donald subsequently got Epstein thrown out of a golf club and banned from Mar-a-Largo for his tendency to perv on underage girls therein, and additionally was generous in cooperating with lawyers acting on behalf of the aforesaid perved-upon teenagers … Orange Man Bad, just because.
Not really doubting this, but… got a cite? I want to be able to throw it in the face of these idiots, and I’ll need something more than say-so.
Thx.
Gavin,
Now who is being the pendant?
Epstein is a Greek-word perv with the usual Greek-word perv’s inability to exercise control over his perverted obsessive-compulsive sex drive as laid out by Holsinger.
All the rest is wasted bandwidth.
For the banning from Mar-a-Largo, for an extra frisson, a Wa-Po story.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/palm-beach-trial-could-reveal-details-of-billionaires-alleged-abuse-of-teen-girls/2018/12/03/f42e0c4e-f4d0-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7a333e335868
I can’t make out from the stories if the banning from the golf club was a separate thing from banning from Mar-a-Largo, of that was a separate club entirely. Given the ways that search algorithms are being massaged (read – heavily pummeled) – I am left to wonder about that issue. But according to the linked story and a couple of others on Weasel Zippers and others – Einstein hit on a teenage employee at Mar-a-Largo, who told her father, who passed the word to Trump … and Einstein was promptly banished.
In some other stories – posted on Weasel Zippers, IIRC – the lawyer for some of the families who initially brought suit against Einstein – lauded Trump for being concerned and helpful towards his clients.
It’s been … interesting to me how my general impressions of the guy have evolved over the last couple of decades, really. I only knew of him at first as tabloid fodder, because I used to read The Village Voice and The New Yorker … in the spirit of mild intellectual curiosity, let it be noted. I was aware of him as this bombastic, kind of vulgar, incessantly-self-promoting real-estate operator, later a reality-TV star … and there it was: there was his public image. Out there, loud and vulgar-proud, combative as all heck, and with the most garish taste in interior decoration since one of the more flamboyant French Louis.
But here and there – those hints that he was actually a decent and responsible person. Any number of stories how he stepped in and donated to someone in serious need. That there was a cabal of women (IIRC involved in real estate, who where his first serious corps of fans, and no, I can’t recall where I read of them) who thought the world of him for his serious work ethic and attention to detail. That in spite of being on the merciless public eye of local NY media for decades … nothing more than he likes to pursue gorgeous and adult women. His adult children all seem to be well-adjusted and functioning. Yes, his influence and wealth may have given them an initial push – but they all appear to do OK.
So under that brash, vulgar persona … there is a nice and responsible member of the community … eh? Whoever would have thought it?
I agree that we shouldn’t get bogged down in semantics. Anyway, those details fade away in comparison to the stuff that the internet crazies have been claiming went on on his island, including in that bizarre temple thing. I doubt we’ll ever be allowed to know anything about it, and conspiracy theories will live on forever.
I’m a lot more interested in Trent’s comment that federal prosecution of Epstein provides Trump with a vehicle to control the news cycle through the 2020 election.
There are so many powerful and celebrity figures who can not only be taken down, but exposed as hypocrites.
The Schadenfreude is strong with this one.
Sgt. Mom: Trump has two ex wives and the present Mrs. that have well documented reasons to hate his guts. Yet he seems to be on unreasonably good terms with all of them.
A thought – apparently an all out war has started between the ‘Justice Democrats’ squad and the House Dem leadership, with the official House Democrat Caucus Twitter account throwing shade at AOC’s smarmy chief of staff after he accused anybody not backing them on ICE/border issues of being racist. Now I’m wondering if the Epstein thing is actually an internal Democrat feud in NY/DC, and Acosta was just the hook used to get it into news.
Yeah – that that all of DT’s exes are on the best of terms with him … either the settlement is generous to the point of satisfying all of their wants and desires, of the non-disclosure agreement is epic and iron-clad.
I prefer to think he has had far better luck in his wives than he deserves and that maybe a little of it will rub off on the country as a whole.
Trent Telenko says: “All the rest is wasted bandwidth.”
I guess we will just have to disagree about what is wasted bandwidth, Trent. My prediction is that — in the long run, and it might be a very long run — we will find out that the Epstein affair is only tangentially about sex. Perhaps as Christopher suggests, it is the outward expression of a major internal Democrat feud. Perhaps it is about Intelligence (US? English? Russian???). Since Mr. Epstein was firmly ensconced in high-level Democrat circles, the key to understanding this affair is to find out which Democrat mover & shaker got so severely pissed off at Mr. Epstein as to allow the sexual stuff (obviously dangerous to Democrats) to come out into the open.
One thing is for sure — Whoever that Democrat mover & shaker may be, he is absolutely delighted that people are focusing on the sexual aspect of the case, and not digging deeper into where the real bodies are buried.
Texas law man Roscoe B Davis just put a major article in a -72- tweet post on Epstein and his history here:
@RoscoeBDavis1
https://twitter.com/RoscoeBDavis1/status/1150411657451098113
The pattern that fairly jumped out for me is that Epstein can in no way, shape, or form be a trader in the financial markets.
He is some sort of information broker using his perv-network — insert theories as to how here — as a source of “insider information.”
The upshot: I think the people paying him money for “trades” are actually paying him off for “insider information”; either as extortion victim or as users of his information.
Given Epstein’s longevity, I’d say many of the people paying Epstein are converted extortion victims.
This “insider information corruption script” strongly suggests that the pillars of Wall Street are dirty here.
Too include some numbers of people in the Federal government’s financial regulatory system and the Federal Reserve who have been sitting on insider information investigations of Epstein.
If this is logical thought stream is true. Then Epstein’s real role in the financial ecosystem was an “open secret” to the “one tenth of one percent” who knew Epstein’s underage sex party trader exterior was a public layer false identity of an “onion” covering his real income stream.
This Roscoe tweet on the sealing of the Federal Epstein case files is what put me on the “insider information” logical thought train:
“This is something that had to reach the very top of the DOJ if not the GWB oval office. Alberto Gonzales was the AG at the time and the sealing of the FBI Case FIles on Epstein were sealed at that level at a minimum.”
This is excerpted from the tweet thread I linked too —
Roscoe B Davis 🎖 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
@RoscoeBDavis1
13m13 minutes ago
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Supposedly Acosta told members of President Trump’s transition team that he was told “to back off” of alleged pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 because Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” that Epstein was above his pay grade.
Roscoe B Davis 🎖 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
@RoscoeBDavis1
13m13 minutes ago
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“I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,”. All these claims are yet to be verified, but honestly I’m hearing from reliable sources that it was coming straight for the 7th floor back in 2008. Translation FBI director level.
Roscoe B Davis 🎖 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
@RoscoeBDavis1
13m13 minutes ago
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Scuttlebutt is/was that Epstein was trading him getting a pass to carry on his sick lifestyle by trading blackmail material to US Intel on some of the most powerful people in the world. That’s a huge deal from a power standpoint.
Roscoe B Davis 🎖 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
@RoscoeBDavis1
13m13 minutes ago
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So if that is true Jeffrey Epstein’s real job was to obtain blackmail on some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful players, and in this sense he was a huge success.
<His girlfriend/significant other/commonlaw wife/pimp was Ghislane Maxwell. She is the daughter of Rupert Maxwell who was a known, as much as anyone can know these things, Mossad agent also of very sketchy background.
That was the Murdoch connection, John Henry, and I see I was wrong. It was Maxwell.
Another sidelight on all this is the story of the Puerto Rican default and how lots of New York money men escaped blame.
In 2015, Puerto Rico defaulted on $70 billion in municipal bonds. Those involved panicked. There was ample evidence that the issuing agencies were technically bankrupt when they issued the bonds and that they purchased fraudulent credit ratings from Moody’s Fitch and S&P. Wall Street’s biggest banks then knowingly sold junk bonds to innocent investors, labeling them as safe investments. Everyone made a ton of money, except the innocent investors.
The evidence of this massive criminal act was overwhelming. The lawsuits and complaints to the FBI and SEC were streaming in. Dozens of Wall Street executives could go to prison. This was serious.
The Wall Street executives went to Senator Schumer and asked for two things: that no criminal investigations or prosecutions be considered and that he somehow limit the bondholders’ rights to keep them from suing.
By this time, all congressmen and senators were made fully aware of the potential fraud that had taken place in Puerto Rico. That didn’t stop Senator Schumer; he put together a small team consisting of himself, Elizabeth Warren, Senator Blumenthal and Senator Feinstein. In January 2016, they submitted a rider to the energy bill that unbelievably would prevent the innocent bondholders from suing. All four politicians were quickly rewarded and the Wall Street contributions flooded in.
Not Epstein but worthy of a scandal.
The Puerto Rico bonds thing is very interesting. I’m trying to find the actual language in the bill and its legislative history…haven’t had much luck so far, can anyone help?
FYI, more Perv-hunting by the Feds:
R. Kelly’s TWO girlfriends are evicted from his Trump Tower home in Chicago after feds investigating the singer ‘found more than 20 videos of him having sex with minors’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7245811/R-Kellys-TWO-girlfriends-evicted-Trump-Tower-home-Chicago-arrest.html
M.O. in common with the Epstein case seems to be the use of young female procurers by the Perv at the center of the case.
Trent T: “He [Mr. Epstein] is some sort of information broker …”
Sounds like you are coming round to the view that the sex is tangential, and the real bulk of this iceberg remains hidden from view.
Here is something to chew on — strictly from a business venture perspective, how does a school teacher in New York start up a business like this, whether the eventual aim is to make money by satisfying the prurient interests of a Bill Clinton or to make money by then blackmailing a Bill Clinton?
It is apparently not difficult to find 14-17 year old girls who will do anything for cash — sad, but that is the world we live in. Getting the girls is the easy part. But getting the Bill Clintons of this world to come to the “party” — there is the challenge!
Once the would-be organizer has a NY mansion and a private jet and a Caribbean island and a big cash stash to make major campaign donations to Democrats, then it is easy to see how it would be possible to identify likely candidates among the rich & famous & political and begin the process of pulling them in. But how does the organizer go from having nothing to having the mansion, the jet, the island? Clearly, there had to be someone backing Mr. Epstein and greasing his path. Maybe that is the person who is now arranging for the authorities to pull him down?
Given the sleaziness & dishonesty we have all seen from the FBI and DOJ in their ongoing treatment of the elected President, we can reject out of hand any suggestion that the pursuit of Mr. Epstein is being driven by incorruptible prosecutors whose only aim in life is to ensure that the letter of the Law of the Land is obeyed. Someone is using the machinery of government to get him. Who? And why?
Gavin: I think it was in Obama’s interest to have leverage over the Clintons, and it is in Trump’s interest to destroy them.
The intelligence and blackmail stuff is phony.
The intelligence angle was merely cover for what was already going on, and is now being advanced defensively as a justification for the secrecy.
The blackmail issue will be the chief defense of many if not most of the perps against criminal prosecution.
It was all about the powerful enjoying the sexual opportunities provided by their power, and as an expression of their sex and power issues by the dominant males involved.
But how does the organizer go from having nothing to having the mansion, the jet, the island?
Maybe the Victoria’s Secret founder was Mark #1. Such a person might have creepy tastes. I don’t know if you saw, “Boogie Nights” but the money man who backstopped the porn movie business was busted for underage girls. That was the end.
Off topic but since Puerto Rico came up and I’ve lived here since ’71 I’ll jump in:
1) NOBODY understands the bond thing. It is one helluva mess. If you find someone who understands it, they are probably wrong. If they are not wrong, send me links because I would love to find out.
2) Last Monday the Secretary of Education and several other high level govt contractors and officials were arrested on various corruption charges.
https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/english/nota/ex-officialsinpuertoricogovernmentchargedinfbiprobe-2504685/ Nueva Dia is a local Spanish language paper that has an english version Probably the biggest paper on the island
3) Friday night 889 pages of chats on Telegram were released. These chats included the governor and a number of others and are highly incendiary. 5-6 high govt officials and a number of contractors have been fired or resigned already. Governor says he’s staying. Near riots in Old San Juan in front of the governor’s mansion have been going on all day demanding he resign. My wife has been watching them all day while I work in the living room. They don’t seem to be cooling down as of about 9PM local.
The governor’s party leaders held a meeting this afternoon to decide whether to demand his resignation. The concensus “Not yet”.
One problem is that the Secty of State is the second in command if the governor resigns. And the SOS was one of the ones that resigned so it is unclear who the successor would be.
Here’s an article about it
https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/english/nota/leakedchatbetweenpuertoricosgovernorandhisexecutiveteamshakestheisland-2505280/
PJDT was absolutely right in his comments about corruption in Puerto Rico.
Our governor threatened physical violence on PDJT for the remarks. “I’ll punch him in the nose” (loosely translated)
And as for PDJTs request today for AOC to go back where she came from, fine by me. Go back to the Bronx. She’s not from here, not Puerto Rican and I hope nobody makes the mistake of sending her here. We have woes a’plenty without her adding her own brand of crazyness.
John Henry
If anyone wants to load the 889 pages of chat, they are linked in the Nueva Dia article. They are in spanish and not text or even high rez so they are hard to read and none of the links, of which there are many, work. Nor are they searchable.
I downloaded them and noodled around a bit before getting annoyed at the formatting.
Governor Ricky is gone by Tuesday night is my prediction.
John Henry
Trent — You said:
“Given Epstein’s longevity, I’d say many of the people paying Epstein are converted extortion victims.”
Maybe what’s kept Epstein alive so long is the fear (or overt threat) that he has a dead-man’s switch somewhere that dumps everything in the event of his untimely death.
Remember–we know nothing, or at least very, very little. You know who knows everything? The President of the United States. All the things that the Obama cronies used to spy on Team Trump are now in his hands. So it’s a darn good bet that things you see are due to either levers being pulled by him or his team, or else by those whose ability to pull levers are puny in comparison, but who are desperately trying to stay ahead of him. So we should all just sit back and enjoy the show.
Also, this is why I find it so bizarre that the Dems decided to go full kamikaze on Trump, and now are openly threatening to go after him after he’s not President anymore–what is their endgame plan? He has ultimate power right now! Why wouldn’t you play nice and say that we can all survive this thing together if no one does anything stupid? By saying they’re never going to stop coming after him (or his family) they’re giving him every reason to completely destroy them.
in that light:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/found-in-epsteins-nyc-mansion-foreign-passport-underage-porn-cash-diamonds-and-more
I have trouble believing the Southern District of New York is into doing favors for Trump. I’d sooner believe that this is more Democrat purge. The “Winners” will be those too young or too obscure to have a photo with Epstein lurking around. Sure losers are Biden, Warren and maybe Bernie.
If you want to know how Pres. Trump is going to use the Epstein digital media in the next Presidential election cycle. Look at how Netanyahu is beating up Ehud Barak…complete with an unforced Pres. Clinton-Lewinsky scandal stupid statement from Barak.
Ehud Barak: I Visited Epstein’s Island But Never Met Any Girls
https://www.thedailybeast.com/israels-ehud-barak-i-visited-epsteins-island-but-never-met-any-girls
“Netanyahu, who has been in office for 10 years, is expected to be indicted on three counts of corruption after a hearing scheduled for October 7, less than three weeks after the September 17 vote. And he has faced an uphill struggle making accusations against his rivals stick. In June, Netanyahu’s attempts to taint hardline former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman as a “left-winger” provoked laughter from reporters.
So he wasted no time after Epstein’s arrest tweeting a published article about Barak’s alleged financial ties to Epstein, adding ominously, “and the media is silent.”
Two days later, Netanyahu tweeted a video juxtaposing Epstein’s mug shot with a 2016 photograph of Barak exiting Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. This time, the caption was “What else did the sex offender give Ehud Barak?”
That sure left a mark.
Trent Telenko Says:
Ehud Barak: I Visited Epstein’s Island But Never Met Any Girls
I saw that in the news and though it would make a great t-shirt.
Or perhaps:
“I visited Epstein’s island and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.”
John Henry
You think mayor yulin might be coordinating the protests
Miguel, it would not surprise me if Yulin is egging the protests on. However, I think the stink is too big and it is not just her but I think the sentiment is more general.
Yulin would have reason to be upset. One of the participants in the Chats said “I’d like to take Yulin out” or something like that in the sense of shooting her. To which the governor replied “You’d be doing me a big favor” I think if I was getting death threats endorsed by the governor, even if not serious(?), I’d be more than a little PO’d myself.
OTOH, I would love to see Yulin taken out metaphorically. She is a disgusting person who, for purely political reasons to bash PDJT and the governor caused us to spend an extra 8-10 weeks without electricity. This was because of her unfounded stink about Whitefish Energy.
I was expecting the governor to resign today but this morning he said he would not. The problem is that the Secty of State was fired/resigned for comments in the Chat. He is second in line of succession. Attorney general is 3rd in line and has apparently said something like “I am happy where I am”
Nobody else wants the SOS job either and until there is a successor in place, the governor is probably right in not resigning.
about 10 minutes after a new SOS is confirmed, I predict Governor Ricky will be on a plane and gone.
John Henry
Events yesterday did give me an opportunity to teach my wife a new English phrase:
Irish Confetti
The ripping up of cobblestones and throwing them at the police. Old San Juan still has some cobblestone streets in the historic sections.
John Henry
The first election results on Epstein will apparently be in Israel. The Daily Mail published photos of former Israeli Prime Minister Barak sneaking into Epstein’s place, and photos of some of the girls then inside.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7250009/Netanyahu-challenger-Ehud-Barak-hides-face-enters-entering-Jeffrey-Epsteins-mansion.html
Cool hat
John Henry