All-In Podcast — Epstein Deep Dive: Prince Andrew Arrested, Global Network, Mythology, Reid Hoffman Files

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incentives where the Epstein industry is now something like I've estimated a billion dollars in terms of the payouts that have been given to purported victims who are allowed to just reimagine things that happened to them 20 years before as an adult, not as a child, but adult at the time of their claim victimization and then call themselves a sex trafficking victim and then they can secure a couple million dollars tax-free from JP Morgan and the media will hail them as these brave survivors without doing a single thing to check the veracity of any of their claims. You know why people are so upset about these redactions in the Epstein files? And I'm upset too. I criticized Thomas Massie and Roana for the language of their bill that they crafted, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which they crafted in concert with Bradley Edwards, this extortionist quote unquote victim's lawyer who's made a killing on this issue over the past 10 years in conjunction with David Boy, another shyer. and Bradley Edwards at his urging Roan and Thomas Massie put in this giant

carveout to so-called transparency and disclosure into their bill such that the DOJ was authorized to redact or withhold or conceal any information that could be the most tangentially tied to anything that's quote victim identifying. So, they've been arguing frantically in federal court for the past few months that they're opposed to the disclosure of Epstein files because it's going to terrorize all these belleaguered women. I don't know. Do you think that maybe if we did get full transparency, it might disrupt this sanitized quote survivor narrative that everybody pushes so credulously? I'll just give you one example and I don't want to go on for too long and I there's so many uh threads that I could pull here that you have to kind of rein me in. But one narrative that could disrupt if we actually did get genuine disclosure, which we're not. And in fact, Edwards at all demanded that the entire archive be taken down because this disclosure was just too horrendously threatening to them. We would maybe get more insight into some of the government propaganda

that's been allowed to promugate unchecked. Sag, I wonder if you've corrected this on breaking points. You can let me know. But for months, people politicians across the media the the political spectrum as well as the media at large have unthinkingly regurgitated this figure that there were over a thousand victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Sometimes that gets upgraded to thousands of victims. That's what pre uh Primila Japal said at the Bondi hearing last week. Ro Connor constantly blurts out this whole this claim of over a thousand survivors. And this is based on the July 6th, 2025 FBI DOJ memo which claimed that they after a review of the evidence after the second Trump administration came in, they found that over 1,000 victims were quote harmed by Epstein. So they used this very conspicuous conspicuous weasel wordage and it was very dubious to me the instant I read it. Turns out, you know, thank God on some level for the Epstein files because there is a major revelation contained therein, which is that this whole this number is a fraud.

It's bogus. They they they admit in FBI memoranda that this number is based on a total of purported victims, the majority of whom were would have been adults at the time of their claim victimization. Anyway, but it that includes the family members of alleged victims in that total number that's been how many alleged victims are there? Well, who knows? Why is the government deceiving the public about it? If people want to be mad about

Michael tell him Pam Bonnie for putting out that phony propagandistic figure and then have it be repeated adnauseium without the slightest bit of critical discernment. discernment. Well, I do, Michael. I think we can at least agree that Cash Patel and Pam Bondi haven't uh handled this all that responsibly on that particular issue. Oh, oh, well, I mean, you're asking me to correct the record of something I've never even uttered. I've never said the word. word. It's literally not something that I've ever claimed. I mean, I do think, Michael, uh, that what you like to do is to go after, and really, I think fundamentally, I'm not even sure if you would reject this. You reject the idea of victimization, that post victimization, uh, can't even happen. And I also, I don't even necessarily want to get the idea of victimization. I don't even know what that means. Well, you reject the idea that women could be victimized, uh, let's say, by Jeffrey Epste, manipulated. Yes. in even if some cases money were exchanging hands. I will say, by the way, that just

paying or flying in adult women from Eastern Europe to for the express purposes of having sex is a crime, by the way. Sure, it's not underage. However, we do have the 2007 draft indictment where there were a number of underage victims that were mentioned there where Epstein specifically asked a 15-year-old if he knows anybody who's younger uh that he could be able to recruited. And so, I do think your core contention that at the end of the day, he was a quote pedophile uh is definitely illegitimate. But I also don't necessarily want to get dragged into the victim uh stuff which I think that you are fundamentally focused on because I do think when you're saying why are people talking about this? It confirms a general suspicion of the way that people act with impunity at the highest levels of American or global society in terms of their moral character in terms of their dealings let's say financially and uh you know you like to brush across this intelligence question. I actually I would love for you to be able to just

grapple with some of the facts, you know, necessarily just related today where the Israeli government was installing surveillance equipment in Epstein-owned apartment but used for the former prime minister of Israel, Aud Barack, where we have Aud Barack and Epstein uh joking questioningly about Mossad where Epstein is foying 1999 the CIA for any mention of himself for the very dealings that he himself had with the arms dealing industry in the 1980s for the fact that he had a false Austrian passport at the age of 29 years old. Austria being the capital of spies long before he ever became, you know, very filthy rich. And so, Michael, I think what you're obiscating is a general interest in the story. And often that what you try to do is find the lowest IQ, most maximalist people talking about cannibals or anything like that and then paint that as a but but I barely mentioned the cannibalism stuff. I mean, of course, you're trying to Yeah, you paint the rest of us who believe, let's say, in some of a bigger

part of this story as I mean, if you believe if you believe that we can just accept at face value that a 21-year-old model who accepted an invitation to visit Jeffre Island when she was in the British false pretenses, let me finish under false pretenses by Jean Luke Brunell. And you've looked into it. No, it had nothing to do with it. This is nonsense. I mean, I'm Tell me if you've looked into what I'm about to describe. Can I have 30 seconds to describe it? All right. Uh, go ahead. Lisa Phillips, who was one of the women, quote, survivors who spoke at these press conferences in front of the US capital and infamously declared that she and her fellow survivors were going to create their own list of Epstein clients and then hand it over to Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massie so they could read it out on the floor of the House of Representatives under the protections of the speech and debate clause and caused a giant media firestorm. As I don't have

to remind you, her whole tale of victimization is that at age 21 as a professional model, she was on a photo shoot in the British Virgin Islands. Another girl, you know, or young woman that she was with invited her to take a ferry to Jeffrey Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands. She accepted. She never claimed victimization for likeif or 20 years. She's on a podcast in 2020 saying, "Gee whiz, I never heard anything about all this crazy Epstein stuff, but I knew him and I I don't know what went happened there." Then all of a sudden, JP Morgan opens its floodgates for settlements of, you know, $290 million. You know, I know like we're not supposed to acknowledge human nature about what that can incentivize on this particular subject. I mean, explain that to me. And she now claims that we're supposed to just take her to be a survivor. She was the one one of the women who also stood up and protested Pam Bondi last week. So yes, Sager, if you do take at face value that that

person can be rightly designated as a victim and fuel and fment this giant worldwide pedophilia crisis that we're supposedly in the midst of, then I don't know. I mean, I consider you to have a pretty high IQ and that's just not some like random on social media talking about cannibals. So you tell me if you agree that that's a legitimate case of victimization and it should be just on the classic example of selecting somebody. Look, I'm not here to defend every so-called Epstein victim. Because, by the way, I think that what you do very expertly is finding people like Lisa Phillips and then trying to portray all of them of that sort. Like, would you deny that vast wire transfers were sent to Eastern Europe to fly in women for the express purposes of sex? Because that is women. Okay. Is that not a crime, Michael? Have you Googled the man act? I mean for somebody who has actually looked into prostitution I mean this is what I'm talking about is that by the way also you have not yet

grappled with the 2007 draft indictment there okay I mean look I have unfortunately very limited amount of time out for that hold on guys so told us um up front that he only had half an hour so okay you know we don't have that much time listen let me ask you a couple other questions and then once leaves Michael we can get you to say what you want to say I want to go to the less waxner deposition the other day. What did we learn from that specifically about how Epstein got his start? I do think that there are these questions about again who this guy was, how did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars so early in his career? How did he seem to um obtain all these different uh connections specifically to the intelligence world? Did any of that get resolved? And what what's your take on that? that? No, David, it wasn't resolved. Unfortunately, the entire transcript is not public. What we do know from the House Oversight Committee, at least

what's been released now so far is Leslie Wexner said he was never questioned ever once by the FBI or the Department of Justice involving this case. I will say if you look at the track record of Leslie Wexner, it's incredibly bizarre. He claims that Epstein was a con man who stole his money for decades. In 1991, we had the power of attorney that was signed over to him. He claims that Epstein was a financial genius and a wizard. We have the transferring of the town home which eventually there was some payment uh that was reconciled uh on the back end. But an incredible amount of control that Jeffrey Epstein had over Leslie Wexner's finances over the Wexner Foundation which he used to funnel money to Aud Barack the former prime minister of Israel support many Zionist causes under the Wexner Foundation including the Wexner Fellowship currently at Harvard University. I do think it's important for us to explore some more of that. There's some very odd dealings with the beginnings of their relationship. Previous Epstein associates have

testified that in 1992, which is shortly after power of attorney and all of that uh was acquired or the relationship, sorry, between Epstein and Wexner began, is that much of Epstein's lifestyle exploded. Wexner does not even dispute uh that Epstein had vast control over his finances and even claims that he was stolen from by Jeffrey Epste that their uh relationship is supposed to have ended sometime I think in 2007 but he has not yet answered questions about this relationship in an open public forum beyond some statements and he currently did issue an opening statement for the record. I personally would like to see the release of that transcript. I mean all for transparency here in this particular case. He's an 88-year-old man and I do think it's genuinely bizarre. Oh, and not to even mention the modeling uh industry uh which you know ep which Wexner himself was involved with and there's several emails including Wexner's own crude drawing in the Epstein birthday book involving boobs that he said that's all Epstein ever wanted. So there be their relationship

is bizarre goes back decades. Wexner maintains as I said that he was conned and that he was stolen from. I don't really believe much of that story. Uh, Michael, you and I have now read thousands of Epstein emails. There's no sophisticated financial instruments going on. Uh, even back to the very beginnings of Jeffrey Epstein's claims here about managing money. Almost none of it passes the smelter. David, you're a very high net worth individual. You can go to Goldbin Sachs or many other financial houses and get teams of people to manage money for sophisticated uh, financial instruments and others not available to the rest of us. be very odd for you to turn over your finances to to Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. So, he he began his career, I guess, at Bear Sterns. I guess it was a brief stint where he worked I guess he one of the curious things about him is he dropped out of college around age 20. I guess he was studying math. He then was a teacher at the Dalton School for

like a year, correct? correct? And then he worked at Bear Sterns for four years. four years. He met Ace Greenberg through the Dalton School. Greenberg's I think it was it was either one of his children uh was there and then he went to Bear Sterns. He's fired from Beer Sterns after a couple of years and that's when his descent into what I call like the darkness his expertise in moneyaundering. I believe that that's when it was honed as reflects in the record and the testimony of the people who dealt with him there at the time including the false passport Iran contour arm smuggling and all of that that I've laid out. S can I ask you a quick question because I know you have to go soon. I'm I'm honestly curious if you would agree with the statement from Thomas Massie. This is from is from Okay. February 16th, he says, quote, "We're exposing the extent of Epstein's global pedophile ring and how it touches our government and aristocracy." So, do you think it's a factually valid

statement that what we know to have taken place and maybe even is still ongoing is a quote global pedophile ring? Well, I mean, when what you're asking about a global pedophile ring, it was well, sorry, this is Thomas Massie saying Thomas Massie, a global pedophile ring is a ring of global elites who seemed aware and perhaps participated in the abuse of underage children. Now, Michael, I will grant you this and what I respect. Well, no, I will grant you this. What I think you do well is to parse the actual individual claim of many of the victims and others that are out there. And I actually think you have a great role in this ecosystem for debunking especially some of the lowest IQ content which is out there like you did with the torture video. So I do want to appreciate you for doing that. That was low hanging fruit. I mean I don't I don't really appreciate this idea that I only focus on low IQ social media blushia of all this sag. Yes, I know you have. Jeffrey Epste is

just casually called a pedophile virtually everywhere in the media and among every politician much of your what he is nobody thought because he would like to pre post pubar don't you find it bizarre that for all the enormous media resources that have been poured into this story over the past however many years among by newspapers magazines podcast specials you name it I guess I'm the only one who ever thought to actually go into the Florida court document and pull up the transcript of the plea hearing in June of 2008 when he entered his two guilty pleas pleas for two state level prostitution charges and he's called a convicted pedophile adnauseium. It turns out the sole minor victim who was cited in that plea hearing as the sole minor to whom he procured for prostitution was literally 17 years old. Yes, Michael. I understand that because they picked the oldest person in the indictment to plead guilty to and there's a 14 15year-old which is named in the 2007 draft indictment which was released. Michael, you're focusing I

I am focusing on a federal document. Uh there's a federal document which specifically alleges a 14 and 15year-old who are abusing including asking a 15year-old if there is this 2007 draft. You have read it. You're going to take as dispositive. as dispositive. Well, I I'm not going to Okay. Unfortunately, it was never uh never contested because of the plea agreement which eventually came forward. I mean, I think you're using the same tactic Alan Dersowitz did in his defense. Unfortunately, I have nothing to do with Dersuits or I don't share his tactical maneuver. maneuver. I unfortunately have to take my child to a doctor's appointment as I flagged uh to do uh and uh in the beginning of this entire thing. And I do I think you'd be operating in good faith as well. Sager for the most part unlike a lot of people who have glombmed onto this story and you're willing to you know engage on the substance. So that again is appreciated by me and you know whenever you'd like to engage further

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I'm always available. All right Michael uh thank you David for the invitation. the invitation. Yes. Thank you for coming Saga. Appreciate it. All right. So Michael let me kind of reset here. Okay. I'm I'm not sure you've had a chance to kind of lay out your case for what you called Epstein mythology. Yeah. Yeah. So, I want to give you a chance to kind of just lay out your thesis here that what's happening is actually a type of moral panic or feeding frenzy, a type of hysteria. You've compared it to the Salem witch trials. Yeah. Yeah. There was also the case in the 1980s of the whole day child abuse. Satanic panic. the satanic where I think hundreds of people went to jail or were prosecuted for that. It turned out turned out I don't know if it was hundreds but more than enough to make it a extreme miscarriage of justice. So that's the comparison you've made. So I guess I want to let you lay out that case in a clear way cuz I'm not sure

that you've had a chance to quite do that yet. that yet. I mean I definitely laid out my case on this score in many other venues and on many other occasions but I guess not on this particular podcast yet. So, I'm happy to sketch it out. In terms of the satanic panic parallel, that's not one that I would have necessarily been most inclined to bring up until recently just because there's now this new layer of the mythology that's added been added with the production of these Epstein quote files where people are reading snippets of emails to signify some kind of coded messaging around cannibalism or around grotesque child sacrifice. that really wasn't a hallmark of the Epstein story so much before this enormous tunch of emails were released. And it relates to the satanic panic frenzy in so far as claims around such things as like truly grotesque child sacrifice, mutilation of infants, you know, bathing toddlers in blood. Like all the most nightmarish scenarios you could possibly dream up were alleged in the 1980s

and taken deadly seriously by the authorities resulting in as you alluded to a good number of people actually being thrown in prison for many years and it was turn it was found to be just a gigantic hoax. Um, but maybe a more apt parallel that also would have been apt even before this latest record production is that the satanic panic frenzy of the 1980s was ultimately concluded to have originated really with one woman who was just straightforwardly mentally ill, delusional, needed to essentially be institutionalized. And yet she would make claims about sex child sex abuse that the authorities countenanced or gave credence to. And there's a similar thing going on with the Epstein mythology. Now, when I mention the Epstein mythology, I'm not talking about the 2007208 the 2007208 Florida nonprosecution agreement or that whole scenario that Sager brought up in peace meal before. That's a different element of this whole story. The mythology developed later, mostly around 2014 with the introduction of these new claims by Virginia Roberts Guay and her lawyers Bradley Edwards, Paul Cassell,

later David Boy in which she alleged that she had been child sex traffked around the world and that she knew that Epstein enforced this child sex trafficking operation via blackmail. And also she made specific allegations against three particular individuals. Alan Dersowitz, Prince Andrew, John Luke Brunell, and then also she accused a generic category of other high-profile trial persons who she didn't specify as also victimizing her like prime ministers and um uh politicians and presidents and so forth. Um, so that's the basically the origin of what I would call the mythology, which is just sort of a different order or magnitude than the initial Palm Beach prosecution, which was effectively a local crime. But in terms of the mythol, the parallel to the satanic panic, Virginia Roberts Kufra was a profoundly disturbed mentally unwell person who was validated and legitimized and now continues to be celebrated as some kind of martyr for truth. Even though if anybody had used a lick of discernment about as to her claims, it would have been found that she could not be treated

so credulously. maybe she needed some help, but this idea that she would be the basis for this global scandal that's rocking all these countries is just outrageous. And there are two others who are fundament two other mentally ill women. And I don't say that even to be pjorative or derogatory at all. It's just objectively true. If you take a look, Maria Farmer is one of these other definitely mentally ill persons who, for example, introduced or was integral in introducing this idea that Epstein had cameras set up in all his bedrooms and bathrooms and was surreptitiously recording prominent people so he could use it for blackmail. And then another one, Sarah Ransom, was one of the people who spurred the mythology in large part around the island. So she came to claim after going through several mental health crisis that she had been systematically raped at the island even though when she actually had to eventually give a deposition. She really described nothing of the sort. She was also an adult when she went to the

island voluntarily and she described what it was effectively a se a consensual you know minor sexual encounter with Epstein but she dramatized it radically in the wake and people don't know I mean David do you did you know this or does anybody know that there in the public know that despite everybody and their mother including like Rokan and Thomas Massie at all declaring that the Epstein property in the US Virgin Islands the private island that it's rape island or pedophile island that there's never been a credible allegation of rape ever discovered that that take that took place on that island. Like is that well known or am I crazy? No, it's not well known. The only reason I knew is because I've heard you on a couple of podcasts. So, I thought it was important to get you on as a counterpoint. So, just with respect to these three women, they did go to the island. Is is that true? Sarah Ransom did. Okay. Okay. Um Maria Farmer, no. Maria Farmer is the one who purported that she was actually

the original Epstein accuser and she was this great hero whistleblower because she tried to sound the alarm way before all these other females were abused. She claims that in 1996 after she had been a 25-year-old employee of Epstein's who basically sat at his front desk in his New York townhouse that she was invited and accepted uh to go to the Ohio compound of Lexley Wexner to be an artist and residence of sorts because she was a paint a painter. And then she claimed that over the course of her interactions with Epstein and Maxwell, she ended up filing a first an attempted police report and then went to the FBI. And she never really specified what it is that she claimed that she reported to the FBI with any clarity. But she told this tale about how Epstein had supposedly stolen these photographs that she had produced of her younger sisters who were below the age of 18 so that she could use those photographs to paint paintings of her younger sisters in the nude. Now, I

don't know. I mean, I guess that's a confession to production of child pornography, but technically speaking, but you know, um, but that's what she claimed. And then she also added that she had been sexually assaulted or abused or raped by both Epstein and Maxwell. And somehow over the course of that assault at age 26, she had like a divine revelation literally and realized that they were both pedophiles. This is how she recounted it years after the fact. And if you look at the police that FBI intake report or the complaint that was memorialized that has come out in terms of the what was contemporaneously documented, she mentions nothing about a sexual assault. She mentions nothing about any kind of sex crime at all. She simply claims that these photos of hers were stolen and there's never been any evidence that those photos were actually stolen. So that's one person and she's come these and these three women ransom farmer uh Roberts Guay were all integral in different dimensions of the mythology. They were incredibly important named plaintiffs in critical

litigation. They, you know, criminal investigations were launched based on the basis of her their claims in various respects. And they're all just profoundly mentally ill, erratic, and wholly unreliable to the degree that if we're going to have a international pedophilic mass hysteria narrative that's at all predicated on their claims, then we've entered into a fantasy land because it will never in the future hold up to any kind of rational re-evaluation or scrutiny at all. all. Okay. So, Robert Scufrey or VRG as as I think you've called her in your Substack. Substack. Yeah. Yeah. When did she come forward with her? Yeah. Yeah. Her story Her story cuz I she was the basis of that Netflix movie or documentary called Filthy Rich about about Epstein. You were saying that that happened after the whole 2008 Palm Beach. Yeah, I I'll I'll explain. by the way, Filthy Rich, which uh o over this past summer when the Epstein furer kind of got reignited, it like skyrocketed to like the one of the, you know, the top of the charts on Netflix once again. So

that little piece of commercial commercial propaganda has been very determinative in terms of how people have had their perception shaped of this issue. And it is like literal propaganda I would argue in the sense that it was concocted as a PR vehicle for the victim quote unquote victims and especially their lawyers to create like a public clamor for some kind of remedial action to be taken against um Epstein's co-conspirators or more more relevantly his estate. It was it was a maneuver. It was a PR maneuver by a legal team who worked alongside the producers of that documentary as has as have been so much of the mass market entertainment products that have been produced around the Epstein affair. It's only taken from that one perspective of the purported victims and that perspective is shaped very carefully by their lawyers to create this sanitized survivor narrative that is now the predominant one. But in terms of her origins, yes, she um she initially filed some civil litigation around around I want to say ' 09 2010 maybe 08 as a

Jane Doe Jane Doe um maybe 2011 somewhere in that range as first as a Jane Doe meaning she wasn't named in the litigation and this related to a period of around 2001 2002 when she was in the Epstein orbit to some extent. And there's there's evidence that she was in the Epstein orbit to some extent. She's not hallucinating everything. I've argued that I would she's not so much a liar. I wouldn't say like I've never directly accused her of lying about anything as such. I've called I've said that she's kind of confabulated an alternate reality. And that's a little bit different because it doesn't necessarily conote willful deceit and it's almost even more disturbing if you think about it. But it. But what's your basis for that? The big one I guess is that in your view that she recanted her story about Dersowitz or Yeah, she recanted her story not just about Dersitz. That's maybe the most well-known instance of her recanting one of her marquee claims and it really only came about because Dersowitz was

unusually motivated to actually pursue some sort of resolution through a very protracted litigation process against very highpowered lawyers. I mean, one of the fallacies here is that these survivors, quote unquote, such as Virginia, are taken to be these bleaguered victims, etc., who had no power at all in this dynamic, and yet, I mean, they were represented by some of the most powerful and skillful lawyers in the country, such as David Boyce, who's like one of the best known lawyers of all time and was hugely wellresourced and also, you know, Virginia Guay became incredibly wealthy. maybe not as wealthy as you, David, but you know, 20 estimates range from like 15, 20, $25 million. It's hard to know because a lot of the settlement details are secret. Um, so it wasn't just this hless victim who had nothing, no leg to stand on in order to make her claims, but yeah, Durowitz, she ended up recanting her allegations. And bear in mind, it wasn't just that she, you know, happened to level some accusation at some point,

maybe in like casual banter. It's that she made allegations of herself having been victimized by Dersuit sexually on at least six or seven occasions. And she described each individual instance of that victimization in vivid, graphic, almost grotesque detail, describing Dersuit's body parts, sexual proclivities, etc. And she did this in sworn affidavit and under deposition. So could theoretically even be subject to perjury charges should a prosecutor ever have been inclined to bring them which of course they wouldn't have been in this environment. Um and but it goes much further. She had to recant claims against Harvard professor Steven Klin who she claims she had intercourse with. Um, she recanted even claims against John Luke Brunell, who's another sort of actor or a player in this whole story that leads people to make their postulations about there being this supposedly international sex trafficking ring because he was like a modeling mogul. But he ends up getting arrested by French authorities under pressure from the US in 2019 after Epstein himself was federally indicted and arrested. And given the vagaries of the

French legal system, which I don't fully comprehend still in relation to the United States, he was in custody or incarcerated for quite a long time prior to any formal charges being brought. Eventually, she's called to provide evidence against Virginia is called from Australia to go to Paris to provide evidence against John Luke Bernell in 2021 in this format that is nothing that takes place in the US, but it's like where the both the defense and the prosecution have an ability to question or have colloquiz with the accuser. And she ends up having to retract her claims against him as well. And you know they her lawyers had to admit that this memoir that she produced or memoir manuscript that she produced in 2011 and 2012 that she was sort of scheming with this ghost writer who was potentially going to work with her, Sharon Churcher, a journalist at the Daily Mail. She was scheming about how they could get the biggest possible book deal or even like a movie deal or some kind of entertainment package deal. and she

already had been paid 160,000 plus by the Daily Mail plus serialization revenue for having done an interview with them and given over the Prince Andrew photo and then they wanted to marshall or leverage that momentum publicity wise from the Daily Mail's articles in 2011 into a book and so Sharon Sarin Churcher in this email exchange you can go read it came ac yeah you know what just like throw throw anybody's name in you can think of who might have had the most fleeting association with Jeffrey Epstein And that'll get us the biggest possible book deal that'll entice the most publishers and agents. And as to Duritz, yeah, I mean, he's pretty well known and we all think he's a pedto, so throw him in there, too. I mean, that's what they're saying. Um, and wait, this is your interpretation of what happened. what happened. Almost literally what they say. I'm almost quoting ver I'm not exactly quoting. quoting. Who said that? Who said that? This is what Churcher says to Virginia Roberts Guay and she's all on board with

it. Wait, how do we know that? Because we have the transcripts of the emails. emails. Oh, wow. Okay. And they came out of the course of discovery in in litigation. And this person was she was a trash journalist. Yeah. Who was working on co-authoring the book with her or what was they were in talks for her to potentially be the co-author of the book. Uh, so they were they were sort of strategizing as to how they could get a book deal or get a literary agent to sign on with Virginia and get her a lucrative book deal. And then what what ended up happening? A draft manuscript was produced. I don't know exactly how involved Church was. Was there published or not initially? Finally, a version did eventually come out last October after Virginia Roberts phrase purported death in April of last year. And I only say purported because the circumstances of it are still bizarre. Look, I mean, I'm I I'm willing to grant that she is in fact dead at this point, but I mean

that's another sort of tangent. But no, it didn't come out for a long time. a draft was produced and then the draft manuscript had to be had to be um um revealed or handed over over the course of litigation with Durowitz and her lawyers by the by 2017 to 2019 had to admit on her behalf so David Boy at all that this fiction that that this memoir manuscript which had been presented as non-fiction which was shopped around to potential book publishers as non-fiction which have been the basis for a lot of media coverage around these allegations as as though it were a non-fictional representation of her purported experiences. They finally have to admit that it was a fictionalized account of her purported experiences. So like for example, example, this is VRG's own lawyers ad like David Boy, Boy, right? Yep. So they basically said that this manuscript which had been the basis for her story and a lot of the mythology like Bill Clinton was on the island she claimed no evidence Bill Clinton was ever on the

island. He did fly around in Epstein's private jet in 2002 and 2003 but no evidence he ever went to the island she saw him on the island and which is false as far as we as far as we know as far as all the available evidence has ever suggested. That probably is one of the most repeated claims in respect to Epstein, which is that Oakland was on the island. And you're saying that's just completely untrue. And that came from VRG's manuscript, which ultimately they had to admit was a work of fiction, not not non-fiction, at least her own work. Correct. But to but what's so mindboggling is that just relatively recently after this whole blow up around Ebstein got ignited last July, the book publishers obviously realized that it was a highly profitable opportunity for them to produce some version of her manuscript in the form of a new memoir. Now, she had been working on a new version of it with another ghost writer for some time, Amy Wallace, but they but they obviously wanted to peg the publication

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of it to this renewed Epstein uproar. So, this her the memoir finally gets published in some capacity in October of last year. It becomes an international bestseller, not just in the United States, but in Britain, Australia, etc. And I'm still stunned. I mean, maybe I don't I can no longer really be stunned anymore, but it's still stunning to think back on how credulously the reception to that memoir was, even though I mean, it was basically just Amy Wallace, this ghost writer, repackaging and massaging. Um, oh, I always catch myself when I use the verb massage now. I shouldn't use that. Repackaging the initial memoir manuscript and basically updating it for 2025 and Nowhere do they nowhere do they dis do they disclose that it's based on a fictionalized manuscript. So it's just a fraud that was So they ultimately did publish a version of the manuscript. Yes. Last year. And did that book include the accusations against Dersitz and Bill Clinton or had that been removed by that point? point? To clarify those allegations of sexual

improprieties against Dersitz were not in the 2011 manuscript. Those were concocted later as a basis for Virginia Roberts Guay to join this ongoing litigation that her lawyer Bradley Edwards had initiated around something called the Crime Victim's Rights Act and how the nonprosecution agreement from 2007208 had supposedly violated the non the Crime Victim's Rights Act. It's a it's a complicated issue. Um but that was debut those those claims against Durich were debuted in December of 2014. Um, but there are a bunch of other claims already in the manuscript from 2011 and there's a reference to Dersowitz, but it's just not a an accusation of sexual uh misconduct. Okay. The the three women that you mentioned um Grey Ransom Farmer, did they have the same lawyers or different lawyers? Were lawyers working together? Uh, pretty much the same lawyers. I mean, it's basically the same cabal of lawyers. It's uh Davis and then Bradley Edwards firm. Bradley Edwards was the initial lawyer that that oversaw primarily the Florida the the the purported victims from the Palm Beach phase from like 200

2 to 2005. um he started representing them around 2008. And then boys came a little bit later around the more kind of grandiose litigation, but they were working they've worked in conjunction with one another and still are. They're still suing as a in a class action lawsuit that they initiated last October, Bank of America to extract a couple hundred more million dollars just like they did from JP Morgan and Deutsch Bank and the Epstein estate and plenty of individualized lawsuits that they've alluded to but never um clarified the parameters of like they brag Bradley Edwards does that they got like 20 or 25 settlements that are still secret. he says from specific individuals whom he acknowledges may not have committed any wrongdoing at all, but just simply don't want to suffer the PR backlash that we're seeing now on steroids. So, it's a hugely lucrative industry. And I don't know, you tell me, David, is this like dimension of this whole story ever mentioned anywhere in any of the popular media coverage, whether it's on podcasts

or on CNN or anywhere? No. Um, okay. So, and even the Deutschbang settlement, I don't think I'd heard of that. What What was that? So when Epstein dies August 10th, 2019, right, right, the aing frenzy breaks out in terms of litigation that is brought against his estate estate cuz at that point Epstein is obviously no longer available to contest any claims that are made against him and liel laws ceased to apply. People are aware obviously that he was very wealthy. He wasn't like a multi multi-billionaire as a lot of people suspected at the time, but according to his um disclosure of assets when he was arrested, his net worth was like six uh 650 million. So still a pretty big estate. And so because of this flood of lawsuits against the estate, the executives of the estate, Darren Indk and Richard Khan, decide to agree to coordinate with the victim's lawyers, Bradley Edwards, David Boy, at all to set up a basically a mediation program that they call the embassy and victims compensation fund, which is a

holistic holistic settlement process that victims or alleged victims could submit claims to and then there would be a mediator brought in to evaluate the claims and decide what amount of money to give out. So there wouldn't have to just be like a flood of individual lawsuits. They could kind of consolidate it. And so they set up a settlement model basically for the Epstein estate which was expressly non-adversarial, meaning there would be no adversarial scrutinization of the claims that were made to justify somebody's entitlement to millions of dollars. dollars. people as uh uh claimants were entitled to as much as $5 billion from just this one settlement fund and it was taxree by the way. the way. Wait, this is with this is with Deutsch Bank. Bank. No, no, this is the epsian estate. I'm getting to Deutsch Bank because it ties into the Epstein estate from the Epstein estate. This Epstein estate was first in the chronology of settlements and so they set up a settlement model, right? It's a non-adversarial, confidential, tax-free because they

claim that it applies under that it could be categorized under the IRS code as like compensation for an injury. So therefore, you don't have to pay income taxes on it. Um, and so that gets set up, right? And then and who adjudicates that? The court in the US Virgin Islands because the estate was doiciled in the US Virgin Islands appointed on the recommendation of both parties a an independent mediator or administrator Simona Lelchuk her name is who specialized she claimed anyway in this sort of thing and like she had an extra sensitivity toward sexual assault victim she claimed um I mean it's kind of a phony we don't want to get you know sucked into that nec necessarily tangent but um yeah so there's an independent administrator and that was modeled they said on said on previous consolidated settlement mechanisms such as like the Jerry Sanduski Sanduski um I don't know if you recall the Jerry Sanduski sand scandal at Penn State where claims were made that this football coach had abused a bunch of

boys and so a consolidated settlement program was set up to pay out settlements to claimments. Okay, got it. So that's the Epstein estate. So let's get to the So then they they they take that model that had been set up for the Epstein estate and then they start going after bank major multinational banking institutions that David Boy and Bradley Edwards decide to very creatively and cleverly I have to say allege were complicit in Jeffrey Epstein's like world spanning child sex trafficking operation and therefore reliable. Wait, what is the nexus between Deutsch Bank or Bank of America and Epstein? Were those the banks that he used? Epstein banked at those institutions. So first JP Morgan from like the late 90s to 2013 roughly and then Deutschbank from 2013 to 2019. And the argument is that they should have somehow stopped his activities. Yeah. That Yeah. That or failed to do a KYC or something like that. that. Yeah. I mean they they they they they first started making a much more accusatory argument about their direct

complicity in facilitating a sex trafficking operation. But what the judge ultimately agreed to was to that they were effectively or they were reasonably guilty or reasonably to be found liable for essentially negligence because Epstein would withdraw cash and that's supposed to trigger certain monitoring provisions that it was claimed JP Morgan and Deutsch Bank did not satisfactorily do. I mean it was kind of like a stretch of an argument frankly but because of the popular climate around oh the people anybody who was involved in this in any way has to pay for all this pedophilic sex trafficking there wasn't a whole lot really that the lawyers for those banking institutions could do to take the heat off so they settle right so they settled so there are two funds and that yeah how big are those settlement funds th those two those two so JP Morgan was ended up totaling around 290 million and the lawyers end up convincing the judge who presided over this agreement in New York, the federal judge Rakeoff, to grant them 30% in legal fees or

attorneys fees that they claimed. Um, and Deutsch Bank was around 90 million or 80 million maybe. Um, okay. okay. So, just add those up now. So, the Epstein estate was around, if I'm remembering, 121 million and that's gone up actually since even more litigation has been filed separated apart from the class action settlement. JP working 290, Deutsch Bank around 80 or 90. So we're already at like a half a billion dollar industry industry and there's plenty of other lawsuits and settlements that have been spawned from this thing. And so I just have never understood or I do understand it. So I should correct myself. I've always found it perversely amazing that this whole aspect of this story is never mentioned because it's led to such things as this gross inflation of the total number of victims where you have adult there's financial incentives. You're saying there's financial incentives here and just the lawyers are these are contingency fee plaintiffs lawyers. They get like 30% or what's their I mean these guys are not paid by the hour,

right? They they're they get Well, no. Well, could that they I don't think it's No, not it's not a contingency fee. contingency fee. Okay. Okay. Set up for this. They they got the judge to approve to approve a 30% earmark of the resulting settlement funds to be g given over for attorneys fees. So, it wasn't a contingent based on the client. It was that the judge approved 30% of the overall settlement. Got it. So the the lawyers who sort of organized these settlement pools, right, right, negotiated essentially their cut up front and you're saying with the judge and you're saying that was about 30% of all these exactly 30%. Okay. Okay. Got it. But you have a if you have a set of criteria that are so lax, I mean JP Morgan even had even more lax criteria than the epste which basically allowed anybody who ever like came within two football fields of Jeffrey Epstein to file a claim against them and get a few million dollars taxfree. Um but the the JP Morgan settlement was even more lax.

So there are people who are event basically rejected the few who were rejected from the Epstein estate fund end up getting a settlement from some of them anyway the JP Morgan or Deutschbank fund. So that that's so this woman Lisa Phillips who was like an adult model never made any claim about anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein that was wrongful for like 20 years said on a podcast publicly that she had no idea what these girls were talking about when they make these allegations against Jeffrey Epstein as of 2020 she said this by 2023 she's getting you know she never she I asked her she didn't disclose to me her full amount but you know probably around 2 million at least and then they get free healthcare from yet another settlement between the US Virgin Islands, the government of the US Virgin Islands and the and JP Morgan um that they set aside for just free health care for until 2028 for any alleged Epstein victim. Um and it's just like don't people people recognize how that can be incentivized

this inflation of the number of total victims we're told must exist and that thus gives rise to this mass hysteria and moral panic about like thousands of victims. I mean at this Bondi Pam Bondi hearing that was so contentious last week at the House Judiciary Committee you had people screaming thousands of victims need you know demand justice and it's just like a concoction that is not grounded in any approximation of like empirical fact. So I always say if people want to be mad at Pam Bondi and Cash Patel for something, be mad at them for signing off on that ridiculous memo from last July where they include that figure of over a thousand victims that has f given fuel to the most maximalist conceptions of Epstein mythology in terms of the victims that were left in their wake. I mean soccer always wants to and I shouldn't maybe say too much. I'm not and I'm not trying to impute him at all, but I do get a lot of people on the internet doing a variation of what

soccer did saying, "Hey, let's just talk about the Intel ties. Forget all this, you know, gossip stuff around. Well, they are interesting. I mean, the intel ties are interesting, right? Sure. I'm I'm, you know, the whole story is interesting. It's interesting that Epstein apparently met Michael Jackson in his Palm Beach house and photos of it came out. It's interesting that he can live with everyone from Donald Trump to Bill Clinton. I agree. It's interesting. Let me bring up one sort of criticism of you and then I want to give Kevin a chance to get in here. So look, I I think it's very important that we hold this process to evidentiary standards like you're saying. I think that people's motivations need to be examined, especially like the lawyers who are bringing these cases who are, you know, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars. So I think you are and I think even Saga admitted this, I think you're playing an extremely important role in this process by bringing some rigor and accountability to a lot of

these claims. I think that's really important. important. At the same time, you're not really offering an explanation of so many aspects that are so interesting about Epstein. And I'm not saying it's necessarily your duty to do that, but I'm wondering, you know, do you have a a theory of how did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars? How did he get so connected? Some people like Mike Benz have said that it all goes back to Burr Sterns where he says that one of his accounts was BCCI which was this notorious international bank that was involved eventually was shut down because it was involved in international moneyaundering and crimes things like that. So I think this is Mike Benz's theory. In any event, do you have a theory that would provide a satisfactory explanation for so many of the threads that we see? Or do you just feel like it's not really your job to to do that and your job is really more just to poke holes in, you know, what are some of the

more outlandish claims of politicians or lawyers? lawyers? Well, I'm happy to address any little data point that people want to throw out at me. I mean, I do that all day every day pretty much. So, it's not like I'm trying to avoid anything or be at all evasive, right? So, people ask me all the time, okay, how did he make his money? What about Leslie Wexter, etc., etc. So, it's not like I'm unaccustomed to addressing any of this stuff. It's just that I feel like there's a bit of a fallacy or a logical flaw in attempting to say that it's incumbent on me to profer some kind of ultimate totalizing theory. I have a theory I could sketch out that maybe explains some of what people would like to know in such you know that people are so titillated by. But I think again one of the things one of the reasons why the coverage of the story has been so horribly bad is that speculation has replaced fact and we just have this whole mythology or

folklore that's developed and that people just kind of am ambiently absorb and then they end up just believing things that are totally false. So, for example, people just believe, and I'm sure you've seen this, that Epstein must have referred to his private plane as Lolita Express. Therefore, anybody who was ever on the plane must have known that this was like a child sex trafficking plane because why else would it be named the Lolita Express after the famous book about, you know, 12-year-old girl or whatever who was a sexual object. That's just like false. I mean, that was this is there's never any evidence for that. It was a nickname that it was invented like by a it was a cheeky nickname invented by this British tabloid. And so that's just one example of all this flatsom that Okay. But but but to go back, do you have a theory of how specifically Epstein got started? Because somehow I guess it was in the 80s he went from someone who was just a trader at Bear

Sterns to very quickly amassing a fortune that I don't know seems like hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean like you said he died with about 650 million. I don't know how big the fortune was in the 1980s. We know that Wexner sold him the townhouse. I guess one of the details that came out the other day is Wexner said it was at what he was told was fair market value and Epstein obtains his plane from Wexner. So, I mean, is that the explanation that somehow he got his start because Wexner was extraordinarily generous towards him? Like, I'm just curious like not quite. Um, so I mean there there was a a huge New York Times article that was one of the few helpful contributions to the popular knowledge around Jeffrey Epstein recently in December where they go through I mean they they basically set out to answer the question that everybody always asks with like a wink and a nod as though they think that the asking of the question is supposed to prove that the answer would be

fundamentally sinister. Meaning how did Jeff Jeffrey Epste make his money? Because the idea is that he must have made his money by dent of his orchestration of this pedophilic sex trafficking ring that he enforced by blackmail at the direction of the MSAD or something like that. And the New York Times goes into fairly forensic detail about how he ended up accumulating money over the course of the 1980s. So people could go read that if they'd like. I mean, I do think that it's fair to say, and saying this does not mean that you have to have to condone everything that Jeffrey Epstein ever did over the course of his entire life, but I do think that he was definitely very high intelligence. I do think that he was um highly proficient in mathematics as a young man, which is why he part of why he became a math teacher at the Dalton School, a pretty prestigious private school in Manhattan. then ends up getting recruited to Bear Sterns and ends up innovating some novel financial

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maneuvers that you're probably much more fluent in than me in terms of describing because I'm not a finance guy. But it was around a time where there was a demand for Wall Street to innovate new tactics for very high netw worth individuals to structure their wealth to lessen their tax burden to do all kinds of other things and Epstein did so and then he leaves Bear Stern. So he rose to the ranks of Beer Sterns pretty quickly. So around around age 24 25 he was like a partner or he had some relatively high ranking position um relative to the rest of the workforce at Bear Sterns at at a young age. He starts up his own boutique financial advisory firm that's tailored specifically to very high netw worth individuals such as ultimately Leslie Wexner who is one of the wealthiest people in the United States. Yes, they do have a he was wexter was definitely Epstein's most important client. They there was the power of attorney that was handed over which is seen unto itself on

the internet to be either inherently sinister or to show us that of course Epstein must have been in some kind of like pedophilic collusion with Wexner. But I mean it's explicable if you actually want to know what it was about. At a certain point people just want to have to have the ability to keep asking that question with like a gleam in their eye as though the they're supposed to it's supposed to imply that there is this ped that like that the pedto sex trafficking is the ultimate answer to everything. But you know, Gilelay Maxwell, when she gave her proper interview last summer to the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanch, in the very first time, amazingly enough, that she was asked by any US government official to simply describe her experiences with Jeffrey Epstein. Imagine that. Um, despite having been integral, we were we've been told all these years in the running of the most prolific child sex trafficking operation, I guess, in the world history. Only in July 2025 did any government official ever just ask her to

describe what her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was all about. And she said that she observed Epstein doing a lot of work that would seem very complicated and intense to her in terms of his financial business. So for example, Maxwell says Epste basically restructuring all of the finances for Wexner's business holdings. And you know, he owned the limited, he owned Victoria's Secret, other kinds of women's clothing outfits and retailers, he had real estate developments. And Epstein was basically the money guy for all of it. And for a man who in the early 90s was already worth like a couple of billion Wexner that is if Epstein is getting like a yearly cut of the revenues that could add up over time, right? And they had a handful of other very high net worth clients like Elizabeth Johnson who was an ays to the Johnson and Johnson fortune. Leon Black the head hedge fund uh manager. So you don't need that many extremely high net worth clients, right? If you're their go-to money manager to eventually de uh

build up a pretty nicesized fortune. I would imagine. So, I'm not saying we have a full accounting of like every penny that he ever accumulated over the course of his life, but we have quite a bit of information and it just occurs to me that some the people who are who most loudly ask how did he get his money almost don't even want to know or read into the information that is currently available. available. All right. Well, I mean, it is kind of unusual that a money manager in that position would obtain that much money so quickly. I'll just say like from my experience with the money management business, they're not generally able to charge that much. But let me put a pin in that cuz I want to let Kevin Bass get in here. I've been following your feed quite a bit. You are basically a startup entrepreneur who got interested in in the Epstein files. I think you used AI to analyze them. And in particular, you've been looking at Reed Hoffman's story about Epstein, and you've put

together an analysis. I think you've called it the Reed Hoffman Files. I've been following your your tweets, and it's quite interesting. Let's start with how you got into this, what got you interested, and and how you've been doing your research. Yeah. So, originally, I just saw that uh there was kind of a conflict uh on social media about Reed Hoffman. I didn't know much about uh the Epstein files or or about that particular conflict, but I was curious. I built some really sophisticated AI tools, you know, mostly using like vectorzed s uh SQL databases and and some of the MCP stuff with the new agents and uh for for some other purposes. And so I wanted to port those over to see if I could resolve some of these questions. Uh Elon had some very strong opinions about Hoffman's involvements with Epstein and he's usually at least uh if he's not always directly on the bullseye, he's usually at least a few inches away. So I wanted to go check those out. And then you know I they they

came out in I guess late January, January 30th, the big ones that the big drop that recently happened. And so I just uh I started going through the Reed Hoffman part in particular uh and I essentially started to try to organize or I have organized most of my analyses around some core claims that Hoffman made about his involvement with Epstein. I've just been asking the question, are these claims true? Uh are they supported by the record or are they contradicted by the record? And um overwhelmingly, like absolutely overwhelmingly, uh they appear to be contradicted relentlessly by the uh the drop that came out in January um 30th. If you want, I can go through some of the big ones. Uh and then I can talk about Yeah, maybe maybe a place to start is with Reed Hoffman's statement in 2019 to Axios. This is when I guess the Epstein scandal first, I think, became national news and people who are closely associated with him felt the need to characterize the relationship with him to distance themselves to explain how

they knew him or how closely they knew him. And Reed's statement at that time was the following. Let me just read this out. This is uh Reed Hoffman speaking. My few interactions with Jeffrey Epstein came at the request of Joey Itto for the purposes of fundraising for the MIT Media Lab. Prior to these interactions, I was told by Joey that Epstein had cleared the MIT vetting process, which was the basis for my participation. My last interaction with Epste was in 2015. 2015. Still, by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I hope to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice for this, I am deeply regretful. deeply regretful. Oh, give me a break. Is that statement accurate? Not at all. Uh, and in fact, it's not just from 2019. Uh, he even reiterated this on February 4th this year on X repeatedly. He said, "I only know Jeffrey Epstein because of fundraising relationship with MIT, which I very much regret. These meetings were all coordinated by Joeyto, then director of MIT Media Lab." Uh, and he also says,

"We with Joey Eito, the director of MIT Media Lab, who asked me to help MIT fundrais with Epstein. I regret blah blah blah." Like, none of that's uh at all true. Uh there's very few mentions of even fundraising with MIT. I would even go so far as to say I don't know. I I've said it this way on on some of my posts, but it's like the extent of the relationship between Epstein and Reed Hoffman, it almost looks like best friends. Like my my best friends I don't interact with as anywhere near as much as as as Reed Hoffman and um and Jeffrey Epstein did over, you know, between 2013 and 2019. and 2019. Um you know there are constant contact uh there's something around on the order of about 400 initiations by Hoffman to Epstein. It wasn't just mediated by Joe Eito at all. And uh you know there's their their sec their assistants were in constant contact with each other. They had extensive financial relationships. There's something like 42 different meetings uh that are documented. Around

20 are absolutely confirmed. Uh they met in in person for breakfast. They would uh spend each other spend each other spend time with each other's at each other's houses overnight meet um you know Epstein met his wife. It is claimed that by Hoffman that he only was there for one night. Even the one time that we have absolutely document that documented that uh he's referring to he was there for two nights and almost certainly there was two other island visits as well in addition. Uh it's an extraordinarily extensive personal and business relationship and it's not just about Joito. Now Joita was a really important part of it. Um Joey was sort of uh as far as I can tell again you guys know a lot more about this than I do but as far as I can tell really going through the files the last couple days. Joey was sort of um Epstein's uh gateway into sort of academia, Cambridge, Harvard science. that's that's sort of his main uh gateway there. Uh Reed Hoffen was his gateway into uh Silicon

Valley into tech the main guy and uh so so there is a very close relationship as well between Joito and Hoffman but there is also very much an independent relationship between Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein. Uh very much independent of Joeito. Joeito. Okay. So So Reed claimed that he only had a few interactions with Epstein. That's false. You're saying he had hundreds hundreds hundreds hundreds including dozens of in-person meetings and and yes yes stay stay at the island at least once you said for two nights not one and there were probably a second or third visit. Yes. Yes. There was the stay at the townhouse. Reed claimed that all of his interactions were sort of mediated by Joeyto and were about the MIT media lab. By the way, it's not clear why someone would feel compelled to spend so much time fundraising for MIT, which wasn't even their alma mater. So, this whole explanation didn't really make a lot of sense from the beginning. But it's pretty clear that the topics of conversation were not about MIT or MIT

Media Lab. In fact, I thought one detail that was really kind of interesting was their first interaction, one of the first was about they bonded over a book called deception, called deception, which I haven't I haven't read the book. I don't know what the thesis is, but it appears appears to justify the use of deception in certain circumstances. certain circumstances. Anyway, I just think that was ironic, I guess, if nothing else. But look, I you know, can I make a quick comment or go ahead? Yes. Yeah, Michael, go ahead. Do you want to be Reed's defense attorney in this context? this context? Not not exactly. Although I end up, I guess, putting myself into a position where it can come across that way. I'm really trying to be the the defense attorney for like sanity. Yeah. Yeah. So, here's what I would say. I have to just reject the whole premise of this discussion that is so ubiquitous now, which is that anybody who so much as exchanged a shortling email with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know Reed Hoffen

apparently had a closer relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than just one email here or there, but the principle that anybody who had some interaction of of some degree to some degree or another, Jeffrey Epste now has something that they have to issue these mealymouth melodramatic statements of profound apology for is just so tedious and ridiculous. What are they guilty of? If the implication is that they're by association guilty of enabling pedophilic sex trafficking, that is a flagrant misconception. Do people know how come it's never clarified that Jeffrey Epstein was never even accused of committing any illicit sexual acts against any person under the age of 18 after the year 2005. So I don't know what years Reed Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein interacted. But this idea that he was like looking the other way while all these pre-teens were being raped is just nonsense. But the media never clarifies it. So now we have everybody from Nome Chosky to Steve Bannon being told that their reputation is in tatters and they are themselves like by association some sort of like sex

criminal enablers and it's just a it's just a total fantasy find this moral panic. Yeah, Michael, I think this I think you're making some really interesting points. Um I think they're important. I think think I mean Epstein pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges in 2008. You're saying Reed Hoffman and Nome Chosky and Steve Bannon should have all said, "Oh, because the guy pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges, which they were, which they were, that means nobody can ever consort with him ever again for the rest of his life." I think that's a ridiculous standard. ridiculous standard. There's two there's two different issues here. one is um whether or not there's this global pedophile ring and you know we can even go further and there's this sat these satanic rituals and all this other stuff which uh I'm inclined to think that uh you're you're very close to the truth in what you're saying. On the other hand, um there are Reed Hoffman's public statements like dramatically minimizing the relationship. Now sure I think that can easily obviously be

explained. There's an obvious explanation where we don't have to necessarily impugn to Reed Hoffman, you know, being a pedophile or any of these other things that people are wanting to suggest because he lied. And the alternative explanation is just that this is such a hot potato. There is a hysteria. So people lie about their relationship with Epstein even though they're not guilty of something that's terrible behind the scenes. Any association at all is radio with Epstein is radioactive. I mean, but so if somebody lies, then I mean, they can be condemned for the lie because lying is like how Lutnik made up a ridiculous lie that was totally pointless and actually counterproductive for his purposes. And the lie itself can be condemnable, but not necessarily because Howard Lutnik is covering up any kind of pedophilic sex criminality, just because of the moral hysteria that's been allowed to be unleashed around this stuff or like any connection in any way to Epstein is like grounds for censure. Yeah. And all right, let me tell you my

my point of view on this. So So first of all, I think you're correct that there's a lot of guilt by association happening and there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy. And like you said, just because someone emailed Epstein doesn't mean that they were involved with him in some nefarious way. And I thought it was unfair when Sager mentioned that Jason had, you know, emails with Epstein back in 2011 to make an introduction. I think that's that's I had even seen that. I mean, it's not important enough even to draw my attention. Like, who cares? There's plenty of interesting material in the files, but like random emails. No, no. And I I agree and that's why I tried to defend Jason there cuz I know that there was just nothing to that. Now, in the case of Reed, I think that there's a couple of things that are interesting about this. Number one is when this new Epstein files drop, Reed came out on X and very aggressively started pointing the finger at other people, wildly accusing both

Elon Musk and Donald Trump of somehow being involved in Epstein's purported crimes. And this is just a classic case of someone throwing stones while living in a glass house. I mean, you look at his own statements from 2019 all the way up to weeks ago and they don't hold water at all. He lies about the extent of his relationship with Epstein, how many times they met, what the subject matter was, what the context was, how many times he visited the island potentially. I mean, just one lie after another while again wildly accusing other people. And you do have to just ask what is going on here? Yeah. And I mean, that just goes to show how weaponizable this whole thing is and how the Epstein story or any kind of tangential connection to Epstein can be leveraged to serve some kind of pre-existing agenda. So, if like Reed Hoffman and Elon Musk don't like each other, then they could accuse each other of like having a more a closer connection to Epstein than they did. And

it's just like a uh a slugfest. And yet, I'm still struggling to understand like what the underlying accusation of wrongdoing is supposed to be. above and beyond just how perhaps Reed Hoffman and or Musk or whomever might have misrepresented the relationship. Well, the question the question is also partly like why did he need to so aggressively attack others? Why did he need to so aggressively lie about the relationship? Is it just that he's covering himself because of a moral hysteria or is there I don't know. Well, I mean, my my theory on this, I think it's kind of obvious what he's doing, is that by pointing the finger at Trump or Elon, actually both, he's driving everyone into their partisan tribes, right? right? So, as to, I think, seek protection of the Democrat tribe to which he's contributed hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think it's worked. I mean, you look at the mainstream media coverage of this, the New York Times coverage of it, which we talked about in a previous episode of the show. They

wrote an article about Epstein's ties to Silicon Valley. Other people who had far less extensive of a relationship with Epstein got paragraphs in that story. Reed Hoffman was only mentioned in one sentence along with three other people. So, he does seem to be getting a pass from, you know, Michael, if you know, you want to characterize this as a feeding frenzy or moral panic or a Syria or what have you, whatever it is, he seems to be getting a pass from the media. And my point about this has not been to accuse Reed of crimes because I don't think we have any basis for that whatsoever. Let me just state that clearly. My clearly. My is there a fallacy of all this then? No. Well, let me let me me get to that. My my point has just been that the media needs to cover this in a fair and even-handed way as opposed to like you said weaponizing it to go after the people they don't like because there's political advantage in that. Or

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another parallel is Hillary Clinton just came out this week and gave an interview on the BBC where she said we the Clintons, Bill and I, we had no real connections with Epstein, but Donald Trump, we can just assume as unassalably true that he's in the process of orchestrating a cover up because he has something to hide. Now, and then on on the other hand, Trump will toggle back and forth between uh Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and Reed Hoffman. They're the ones who are truly implicated by their association with Epstein. I had nothing really to do with the guy. And then the next day he'll say, "Oh, I'm a little upset or rofal that Bill Clinton's been dragged into this mess." And it just gets, you know, framed around, organized around just like a partisan battering ram. And it just becomes incredibly tedious because there doesn't even have to be anymore any concrete allegation of any wrongdoing whatsoever. There's no credible allegation of any pedophilic wrongdoing by either Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Reed Hoffman, Elon Musk,

anybody. It's like what are we talking about here? Ultimately, we're like in this other domain of like who can establish the most damning guilt by association even though nobody can spell out what the guilt is supposed to be tied to. tied to. Well, and but here's the question is why did Reed so brazenly lie about his relationship with Epstein? It could just be be why do you have a lipnic lie? Well, it could just be that he wants to protect his reputation in business by minimizing the association. But obviously, when you lie that extensively and that brazenly about it, it is going to make people think that you have something to cover up. And you know, I think that people think a lot of dumb things. I mean, is there like any evidence at all that would that would tie Reed Hoffin to some kind of child sex crime? Not I'm not accusing him of that. So if people think that's what's being covered up, then they should be disabused of that facious notion rather than

countenancing the notion and allowing the mass hysteria to continue proliferating unhindered. proliferating unhindered. Can I ask you something, Michael? What evidence is there for um so on the island or in general? What evidence is there that um people were being trafficked? Maybe not minors. Uh, did that actually were people actually going to the island for that purpose? Was that that extensive or not? It's impossible to know what people even mean by trafficking anymore. Trafficking is an incredibly nebulous concept. It's very much open to the whims and discretion of prosecutors who seek to fit some fact pattern to a desire to prosecute somebody for some sort of t, you know, sexual related offense. if it involves simply facilitating the movements of somebody from point A to point B. So if adult women consensually flew on an airplane to go visit a luxury island in the Caribbean and over the course of that visit maybe they engage in some consensual sex act and then 20 years later they can retroactively classify it as trafficking and that will

entitle them to like millions of dollars in taxfree settlement money. Are we going to take at face value that that constitutes trafficking? because I don't. So I'm I'm always a little bit mystified as to what we're supposed to understand as trafficking. Now, so your overall perspective on this is basically that a lot of the discourse about this is constructed and we don't really understand the underlying facts. Is that your I mean I understand the underlying facts to the greatest degree that I can ascertain them. And I think that they're they are just chronically and almost unbelievably mischaracterized everywhere you look. you look. Let me get you to react to this tweet that someone just at mentioned you on. Uh oh, here we go. A brilliant uh feedback. Um well, this is Okay, this is a guy. I don't know this guy. Present witness. Um but this is what he's saying is the evidence. Okay, so I just, you know, I want to get your reaction to Well, let me read this for people who are just

listening and can't see the screen and then I'll get your reaction to it. So he he says, here's the evidence. $160 million from Leon Black, $50 million townhouse and power of attorney over Wexner's estate. Cameras in his residence wired by Israeli government. Compromising photos of Prince Andrew Clint, etc. Confirmed sex trafficking of underage girls from Maxwell Brunell and others. Teaching job with William Bar Princy's CIA. Kosogi was a client of Epstein. Epstein. Princes moneyaundering for intelligence. Adviser to Ehood Barack and the Rothschilds. Rumler chief who was a chief legal officer of Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel under Obama was a key adviser and backup executive as well. There are millions of files still redacted. None have been released by CA, State Department. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone telling you that there's nothing to see here is attempting to whitewash the most important revealing intelligence related story of our lifetimes. And then he calls you out here. Michael Tracy doesn't understand the difference between evidence and proof and is cynically exploiting sexually abused

women for engagement. Okay. I mean, first of all, I don't know what that guy is even arguing all that stuff is supposed to be evidence of. like what is the ultimate contention that he's claiming those myriad scattered data points are supposed to justify? I mean it it that's that's why that's what's so strange about this story. Nobody can really ever articulate like Sager struggled to articulate what I suspect actually is his ultimate belief which is that there was some kind of pedot trafficking operation. like he I think said that he agreed with the Thomas Massie quote that I read out to him, but on its face that's sort of like a bizarre statement to make. So, they latch on to this other peripheral stuff around intelligence and whatnot. And that guy said, "How dare anyone ever say there's nothing to see here?" And he ascribed that to me. I've never said there's nothing to see here. People tell me all the time that I allegedly have said there's nothing to see here, but I don't

say that at all. I'm pretty much as obsessed, if not more obsessed with this story than anyone at this point to a degree that's probably not very healthy like mentally. like mentally. Obsessed with it, but hold on. You're obsessed with Hold on, Michael. Let me just let me ask you about that. You're obsessed with it in the sense that you think this is a modern-day Salem witch trial, right? Which is fascinating. Yeah. So you're fascinated from like a sociological standpoint which is have humans evolved beyond you know where they were hundreds of years ago engaging in witch hunts and things like that or do you think it's interesting in other ways? ways? I think it's interesting in other ways definitely in that way as well but there are other ways in which it's interesting. I think it's almost interesting as an anthropological survey of sorts among you know elites movers and shakers you could say where Epstein did have this extraordinary ability to network and to convene people who probably otherwise would never have been

convened. So I've been saying that I think Jeffrey Epstein is the only man on earth who could have brought together for a friendly social pow-wow Nam Chosky and Steve Bannon. Like I'm almost jealous of that. I mean, I'm sure that would have been a very fascinating discussion to listen in on, right? And there are other examples. And so, I think it's interesting from that perspective. I mean, I think everything that every little piece of information that can be uncovered about Jeffrey Epstein's life is now almost intrinsically interesting just given the salience of the story, right? So, I guess I'm interested just from that perspective because like obviously he's now a historic or world historic even figure. And so, yeah, I'm always I'm always down to find out something new about what Jeffrey was up to. So, sure, I think it's interesting politically just in terms of how this can be leveraged into some sort of political battering ram against enemies. And, you know, this is like the number one oppositional Trump narrative of the second term. It's almost Russia gate

redux in the outsized prominence that ep that uh Democrats are giving it in terms of what they bring up day after day in hopes of it undercutting Trump or beding him. So yeah, it it doesn't have to be like the the new new Russia gate in in that way where every possible tangential fact is somehow connected and it the whole thing kind of metastizes and is used in a partisan weaponized way. weaponized way. Yeah. And but but it's different in that there's an international component like this is the number one scandal right now that's ravaging Norway, Slovakia, I was mentioning obviously Great Britain today, today, other places, you know, United Arab Emirates, um name your country. So there's like it's been internationalized, which is just fascinating as well. The didn't didn't they burn like an effigy of Jeffrey Epstein in Iran or something? I mean it just never ends. So of course there's like infinite fascinating material at least to me. I just don't accept that in order to be fascinated by this, we must

buy, we must, you know, have this weird epistemology where we can just collect all these discrepant little pieces of information, blast them out on the internet, and then just think that we've done the argumentative and logical work necessarily necessary to somehow establish how that proves our ultimate notions about what the story is supposed to signify, which again is pedophilic sex trafficking. enforced by blackmail that ens snared prominent individuals at the direction of some intelligence agency. That's the crux of the Epstein mythology and it's been systematically unraveled unraveled including you know partially by this the disclosure of more Epstein files but even prior to January 30th or December 19th the two productions there was never any credible evidence for any of it. So yeah, I am fascinated in terms of how people come to believe such mythological things and the journalistic malfeasants again that has been characterizing the story as well is is of particular interest to me because they it's been a central factor in how the mythology has been allowed to just kind of proliferate

without any counterveailing point of view view being put to it. All right, I think that's a pretty good place for us to wrap up. Kevin, do you have any final thoughts? thoughts? Um, I'll just continue releasing some of this stuff. I uh I tend to agree with Michael, but um you know, I also think that sticking to the facts is also very important too and and telling the truth is is important in both directions as well. So, well. So, can I can I just make one concluding thought? I I actually do think it's, you know, I'm I'm happy for this opportunity to speak on your podcast. I assume I'm reaching an audience that probably would not not otherwise hear of me to a large extent and because I do think it's actually very disturbing that so many people around the world are being told that it's somehow been proven or vindicated that there is a massive child rape ring or that there were mass child rapes that were allowed to be perpetrated by the highest levels of

government and then were covered up because as I mentioned on Piers Morgan this week, it's very easy to imagine how people with a predisposition toward mental illness mental illness who hear this stuff and believe it might be driven to do something like homicidally crazy. So, I'm not predicting anything in particular. I just think it's it's probably the most explosive explosive thing to tell the mass public in terms of what it might incite particular people with a particular mental instability to to to do. So, I mean, that's just one of the potentially detrimental effects of all this that I think it should be rationally countered to the maximum extent possible. And I think we're going to be beset with this issue for the foreseeable future. So, at a certain point, I don't know, maybe there should be a little bit more momentum behind providing some degree of a rational corrective. I mean, or does it is it just me? I mean, am I the only guy who's going to be doing this forever more? I mean there's some more who have

like come to take on a little bit more of a skeptical perspective but well I think we we have we should be cognizant of the real world ramifications rather than just speaking about it in the abstract or who suffers more Reed Hoffman versus Elon Musk or all this other stuff. I think it it really is a crazym thing that's been inculcated in the public. Yeah. Well look I think both of you have performed very valuable services for the public in regards to this whole episode. I think Michael, you are asking really important questions about evidentary standards and what is the basis for some of the more let's call them Epste maximalist claims out there again about this global pedophile ring and so forth and I think you're right that when you're talking about crimes you have to be evidence-driven and there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy here and it is appropriate to ask what the motivations are of everyone involved in the story and you're one of the only people who are doing it although it does

seem like you are making a There does seem to be a vibe shift a little bit around what you're doing. Yeah. Most people who are have like who have their brains wired in a normal way, which would not include me, you know, would probably have an like a negative emotional reaction to being inundated day in and day out with accusations of personally being a pedophile or harboring like depraved sexual fantasies of of children or whatever. But like, you know, obviously that is not the case for me. But I can withstand it because I'm used to the torrent of vitriol. But most people, I think, probably would be dissuaded from taking a certain angle on a certain subject if that's what they had to endure. Well, the mob does not like being accused of being a mob. And their defense mechanism seems to be to accuse anyone who points out some of these problems and the the logic of basically somehow being involved in in the crimes that they're alleging. So in any event, I I I do think that you

are performing a valuable service. You know, when Hollywood dramatizes this, it's um you know, it's like Henry Fonda and the Oxbow incident or maybe it's Gregory Pek and Tequila Mockingbird. You've got a mob and you have this one lone figure who's standing up thwart the mob trying to talk sense into them. And you know, in real life, it's not Gregory Peek. It's like a guy in a one-bedroom apartment in New Jersey. Yes. Yes. for all the money I'm told I'm surreptitiously receiving from Leslie Wexner and the MSAD. I mean, I wish I could get some better digs, but yeah. And Kevin, I do think that what you're doing is really important because I think that this the citizen journalism here that's soothing through the Epstein files is turning up really interesting things. And I do not think it's appropriate for Re to be again wildly pointing the finger at other people while the evidence shows that he's been bold-faced lying about every aspect of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And to be honest, if he had just kept

his mouth shut and not accused other people, I'm not even sure this would be a topic on the show. I would just wait to let the chips fall where they may and see what ultimately comes out about this. But he kind of put himself in play by saying all of these things and I do think it's appropriate to examine the record and record and and assess his credibility on that basis. And you've done that job and I hope you and other people will keep going through the files and actually seeing what is actually there so we can get to the truth of this story. I agree and thank you. Well, let's let's wrap it there. I just want to make one final point, which is, you know, even when years ago this was sort of a cause celeb on the right where you had right-wing podcasts pointing the finger at Bill Clinton or other left-wing figures. I never weighed in on this. I wasn't sure what to think. I still am not completely sure what to think

about it. I don't want to get over my skis in terms of overly associating myself with any one point of view because I think when people do that they do kind of dig in and I'm keeping an open mind with respect to what comes out next. It would not surprise me at all if Michael Tracy turned out to be correct but also it wouldn't completely surprise me if some version of Sagar's uh version of the story proved to be correct assuming more evidence comes out. So I'm keeping an open mind. I do think it's really important for us to evaluate the claims critically, which is why I think it's important to hear from people like Michael Tracy and I look forward to seeing what comes next and we'll address it then. I I try to be rigorously evidence-based as well myself. So, I don't discount the idea that something could theoretically come out that would undermine some of the assumptions or conclusions that I've derived from my, you know, research and reporting on this. So I think that's a

healthy epistemological habit to always be open to the possibility of something that's contra in contravention of your prior assumptions uh being presented to you. you. Absolutely. Absolutely. Fully agreed. Okay, we'll leave it there. Thanks, guys. We'll let your winners ride. Rainman David and we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you. Queen of

besties are gone. That is my dog taking notice your driveways.

Oh man, myasher will meet me up. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cuz they're all just useless. It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release somehow. somehow. be wet your feet. We need to get murky's art.