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It Wasn’t About Epstein Anymore

Aug 102019
 
 August 10, 2019  Posted by at 6:53 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Man with ice cream cone 1938

 

My first thought after reading about Jeffrey Epstein’s so-called suicide is: let it go, watch a movie instead, or go out to dinner. But a suicide of someone under suicide watch is just too much. And then I understand NBC -oh wait, and Reuters too- said he wasn’t even on suicide watch anymore. A guy who allegedly tried to kill himself two weeks ago. But of course. Why should he be?

The FBI has announced an investigation, and so has Bill Barr’s DOJ. Problem is, there are so many people with strong connections to both FBI and DOJ that these investigations are as likely to bury the truth as they are to reveal it. Because this ceased being about Epstein the very moment he was apprehended at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey July 6.

It became about Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, Ehud Barak, and god knows who else. It wasn’t about Jeffrey Epstein anymore, it was about his ‘friends’. It was also about Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter and heiress of media tycoon and Mossad asset Robert Maxwell, another ‘victim’ of an apparent suicide two decades ago.

Ghislaine who still walks around free, who hasn’t been charged with a thing, after having been credibly and repeatedly accused of procuring at least dozens of underage girls for Epstein and his friends.

It’s pretty safe to say that in the highest, re: richest, circles of our societies, this is what goes on. A lot. Presidents, prime ministers, corporate tycoons, they were/are in Epstein’s black book, and it makes no difference whether they succeed in making that book disappear. We just got another glance at their world.

Sociopaths and psychopaths are the shit that floats to the top of our societies. Because that’s where they can do most damage. Because that’s where they find the power their distorted minds crave more than anything.

Jeffrey Epstein to my knowledge never ordered bombing campaigns that killed 1000s of people in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. But some of the people he hung out with, and provided young girls and boys for, did.

We can only hope that Bill Barr and Donald Trump are going to be serious about finding out everything about Epstein’s world. I understand that the warrant on his Manhattan mansion stands, and now that he’s gone, there’s no-one left to fight it, so everything on the premises is fair game, whoever is mentioned in all the files, videos, books etc.

But I can’t say I’m very hopeful. For instance, it appears overly obvious that Prince Andrew plays a very dark role in the whole Epstein play, but what are the odds he’ll be arrested for it? I would venture that the odds MI6 murdered Epstein are much higher. But that’s just me, and I’m not a betting man.

 

Epstein was arrested at Teterboro on July 6. I wrote the piece linked below on July 19, three weeks ago to the day. His first ‘suicide attempt’ was two weeks ago. When he ‘killed himself’ today he was allegedly no longer on suicide watch.

What did George W. Bush say again about ‘fool me twice’? “I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me… You can’t get fooled again!'”

And wait a minute, who’s going to get all of Epstein’s money? Here’s me on July 19:

 

How Long is Jeffrey Epstein For This World?

There are three main threats to Jeffrey Epstein’s life (or four, if you include his victims).

No. 1 is his fellow inmates in the Manhattan MCC. He’ll be in very strict isolation, because inmates and pedophilia is a very explosive combination. So isolation, but that’s never 100%. And Judge Berman yesterday ordered him in jail until his trial(s), instead of in his $77 million Manhattan mansion not far from that same prison, so he’ll be there a while; that trial could take a very long time to happen, even years. All the more chance for an inmate to make an easy $1000 by offing him.

The no. 2 threat is Epstein himself. Berman’s decision means he’s very unlikely to ever get out again. Chances of him being declared innocent are as close to zero as as anything Kelvin. So why would he want to continue to live? Perhaps his lawyers try and tell him he’s always got a shot, and there’s always a next court date, but he doesn’t strike me as fully delusional. I could be wrong, sure, about much of all this, but I don’t think so.

The no. 3 threat is, obviously, the people he might “sing” about. And that’s an litany of the world’s who’s who. No doubt the FBI may already have their IDs and photos and what-not, but why chance it when you can take down the -potential- crown witness?

 

[..] …Fox, also from July 18, because it targets Prince Andrew. Is MI6 going to be able to muffle away the obviously very strong and long-term connection between Epstein and Andrew? I’m thinking they’d probably have to get those 2,000 pages re-sealed. Or, you know, burned down. Nuked. To summarize my thoughts on this, and the reason I started writing this, I can’t see Epstein living much longer. There are too many people who would rather see him dead, including perhaps himself. And there are very few people who want him to get into lengthy talks with prosecutors who are actually looking for the truth.

Now of course we must wonder if any prosecutor wants that truth. Alex Acosta left his US government job because “Epstein is intelligence” was not enough to let him keep his job. And if we can believe some of the stories about the CIA, the State Dept and Mossad being linked to Epstein (and we got worse than that), it looks like he’s just got to go. Unless someone, or some party involved, has a reason to protect him against all odds. If only to handicap some other people.

 

 

 

 

Epstein, or How Your News is Cooked

Aug 092019
 
 August 9, 2019  Posted by at 8:09 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001

 

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unsealed a batch of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case today, as announced recently. Actually, it’s a case brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s madam and main procurer of little girls. Giuffre bought the case after Maxwell accused her of lying about the whole thing.

There’s still much more of this to come, and given the VIP status of many people mentioned in the case, and the documents, there’s no saying what exactly will be revealed.

But I thought I’d pick out a few bits, if only to show you to what extent your opinion on cases like this is being manufactured for you, without you realizing it of course. And if you think you DO realize it, chances are you are the sucker at the poker table.

First, the Guardian’s take:

Jeffrey Epstein: Large Tranche Of Files Released In Ghislaine Maxwell Lawsuit

A large tranche out of 2,000 pages of potentially explosive documents in a lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell – the British socialite and daughter of former media tycoon Robert Maxwell accused of acting as a recruiter of girls and women for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein – have been made public. Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s many accusers, filed a Manhattan federal court lawsuit against Maxwell in 2015, alleging defamation.


Giuffre, née Roberts, claimed Maxwell defamed her by calling her a liar over her allegations against Maxwell and Epstein. Giuffre has alleged that Maxwell recruited her to work as a masseuse for Epstein when she was 15 and had been working as a locker-room attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Giuffre had previously alleged that Epstein, who had political connections, forced her into sexual encounters with Prince Andrew.

That’s an introduction in case you still needed it. And the best the paper can do after that is regurgitate a bunch of Trump quotes, along with a two decades old photo of Trump and Epstein:

Epstein, a financier whose net worth is now thought to be some $560m, also associated with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Trump, who was pictured partying with Epstein and women in the 1990s, has recently attempted to distance himself from the financier. In the wake of Epstein’s arrest last month, Trump told reporters he “knew [Epstein], like everybody in Palm Beach knew him”, but added: “I had a falling out with him. I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”


However, in a 2002 profile of Epstein from New York magazine, Trump was quoted as saying: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Clinton also distanced himself from Epstein in a statement issued by his press secretary, saying he had “not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade” and “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he had been recently charged in New York”.

Now, if you turn these two quotes around, and you start with the 2002 one and follow it with the morse recent quote, what you end up with is Trump at first being unaware of who Epstein is and upon finding out, distancing himself from the man. There’s also the alleged fact that Trump threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago some 15 years ago for forcing himself upon an underage girl.

I’m not trying to exonerate Trump, and may he burn in the same hell Epstein is going to if he’s guilty of the same depraved behavior, it’s just that I haven’t seen any proof, merely another endless tempest of innuendo, such as we’ve seen about Trump for 3 solid years now. Anybody remember Russiagate?

And you know, this is from the Guardian, whose simplistic worldview is everything Trump=BAD and everything Putin=BAD. But it’s still a bit puzzling. If they assigned a reporter, or more, to the story, how is it possible that the reporter(s) didn’t pick up on the one thing that is actually newsworthy about it? I think I know how that is possible: Trump=BAD.

I hadn’t seen any reports of Trump being on an Epstein plane to date, but CNBC’s coverage of the unsealed documents lifts a little piece of the veil. He WAS on an Epstein plane, albeit over 22 years ago, but it wasn’t the Lolita Express that flew underage girls and VIPs from various US locations to Epstein’s private Caribbean island. It was just Palm Beach to Newark.

That is something I’ve been wondering about for a while: We know that Bill Clinton was on that Lolita Express at least 26 times, yet there are no reports of Donald Trump having been on it even once. But just about any article that deals with Epstein has a 20-year-old photo of him with Trump.

Giuffre names names, 5 in particular, as CNBC found out from the docs. Wait, but the Guardian did not find these names?! What was the Guardian looking for then?

Court Documents About Jeffrey Epstein, Accused In Sex Traffic Case, And His Alleged Procurer Ghislaine Maxwell

The documents include one containing flights records showing that President Donald Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane in January 1997, from a Palm Beach, Florida, airport to Newark, New Jersey. In another document, one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, says Maxwell directed her to have sex with a former governor and other prominent people.

The files released Friday are part of a defamation lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Maxwell several years ago. The suit accused Maxwell of calling Giuffre, a liar for claiming that Maxwell and Epstein sexually abused her when she was underage. Giuffre had also alleged that she was sexually abused while in Epstein’s circle by “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executive, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister and other world leaders,” as well as noted lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor.

[..] On Friday, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Maxwell’s request to have the full circuit review an earlier decision by a three-judge appeals panel that had denied Maxwell’s effort to keep the entire case sealed. The circuit court sent the case back to the district court, where a judge will decide how much of the remaining documents will be unsealed. It also unsealed documents that included pleadings in the defamation case, depositions, and other material.

Among the documents unsealed is deposition of Giuffre, in which she says that Maxwell directed her to have sex with Prince Andrew of Britain, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, hedge funder Glenn Dubin, late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, modeling company founder Jean Luc-Brunel, the owner of large hotel chain, and another prince. In that deposition, when asked if she was angry at Epstein, Giuffre answered, “Furious.” Asked if she was angry at [Alan] Dershowitz, Giuffre said, “Absolutely.”

But all the above, the Guardian and CNBC, is only an lead-in to what made me take this up. The first I read about the unsealing was from Adam Klasfeld at CourtHouseNews via Zero Hedge. And there is not one iota of doubt about what is the main take-away from the first batch of unsealed docs. None. How did the Guardian miss this then, and CNBC? Is it incompetence? You be the judge.

Epstein Documents Hit; Accuser Says Trump ‘Didn’t Partake In Any Sex With Any Of Us’

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ordered the partial release of what is expected to be approximately 2,000 pages of documents related to convicted pedophile sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The document release stems from a 2015 defamation lawsuit in New York brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Epstein’s ‘Madam’ – Ghislaine Maxwell.

Giuffre says Maxwell helped Epstein traffic herself and other underage girls to sex parties at the billionaire pedophile’s many residences. The case was settled in 2017 and the records were sealed – leading to an appeal by filmmaker and author Mike Cernovich, who was later joined by the Miami Herald and several other parties including lawyer Alan Dershowitz – who has sought to clear his name in connection with Epstein’s activities.

[..] While Epstein’s ties to former President Bill Clinton and other famous figures are well known – all of whom have tried to distance themelves in recent weeks, much has been made about the relationship between President Trump and the pedophile financier.

Following a 2011 article by journalist Sharon Churcher claiming that Donald Trump was a “good friend of Jeffrey’s,” Giuffre was asked to clarify Churcher’s possible misquote that “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s,” and that Trump “Didn’t partake in any” of — “any sex with any of us but he flirted with me.” “It’s true that he didn’t partake in any sex with us, and but it’s not true that he flirted with me. Donald Trump never flirted with me,” said Giuffre.

That main take-away, the Big Kahuna, which concerns the President of the United States, is that Giuffre fully exonerates Trump. At least for what she has witnessed of Epstein’s behavior. And Giuffre, if you follow the story, was a pretty central figure in the Epstein/Maxwell depravity. And she was that for many years. So you would think that must be the Guardian’s big fat headline tomorrow morning. Yeah, good luck.

The Guardian wrote the story for you long ago -and you don’t get a say-: Trump=BAD and Putin=BAD and Julian Assange=BAD and Jeremy Corbyn=an antisemite, so also BAD.

Here are the docs:

 

And:

 

And I keep on asking myself: how is it possible that Ghislaine Maxwell is still walking around free? Does she have something on every single DA in the US?

Also, the news out of those unsealed docs is that the President of the United States is exonerated by perhaps the no. 1 victim in Jeffrey Epstein’s cabal, and the media just “forget” to report on that?

 

 

 

 

Why Did Jeffrey Epstein Fly Back To The US?

Jul 122019
 
 July 12, 2019  Posted by at 7:24 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer The astronomer c1668

 

 

Alex Acosta is gone. That would appear to be good thing, because even if he claims he did the best he could in the 2008 Jeffrey Epstein plea deal, given the number of accusations and the seriousness of the alleged crimes, that deal seems to have had anything but the best interests of the victims in mind. That he agreed as part of the deal to not notify the victims was not only illegal, it was a total affront. It ‘sealed’ the deal, so to speak.

Saying “I was told to back off because he was intelligence” doesn’t make all that alright, it merely makes Acosta, if it were true, a salesman choosing his own career over the wellbeing of underage girls. But that’s still a bit of a side issue, at least in today’s frame, because it happened 11-12 years ago, and a lot more accusations are on the table now.

As I said earlier today, if they release Epstein on bail now, there will be riots. That’s how serious even America takes sex trafficking of underage children, provided their media tell them about it. They didn’t for many years in this case. So first giant kudos to Vicky Ward, Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald and Mike Cernovich and others. No matter what the MSM do, there are still a few voices left out there.

 

But there was something else I’ve been thinking about. I’ve read more on Epstein the past few days than I would advise anyone to do, learned a lot, but I keep having this question in my head: why did he fly back to the US from Paris on July 6? It might have appeared to be an ‘innocent’ trip, if you think anything about the man could still be labeled ‘innocent’, but something happened three days before the trip.

That is, a New York federal appeals court ordered the unsealing of up to 2,000 pages of judicial documents pertaining to Epstein and his ‘environment’. These pages do not address what led Acosta to let him off crazily easily in 2008, they’re from a 2015 case brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who accuses Epstein, his alleged partner-in-sex-crime Ghislaine Maxwell, Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew.

But please allow me to take a step back. Here’s Julie K. Brown on July 3:

A New York federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the unsealing of up to 2,000 pages of judicial documents that are expected to show evidence relating to whether New York financier Jeffrey Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, were recruiting underage girls and young women as part of an international sex trafficking operation.


The decision comes two days after the Miami Herald urged the court to issue a ruling in the civil case in the wake of last week’s Justice Department announcement in the federal criminal case that it would not void Epstein’s controversial 2008 non-prosecution agreement.

And then we move over to Courthouse News:

[..] In a partial dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Rosemary Pooler argued that all of the files should have been handled by the trial judge. “On that score, it is worth clarifying here the breadth of the court’s unsealing order: it unseals nearly 2000 pages of material,” Pooler emphasized. “The task of identifying and making specific redactions in such a substantial volume is perilous; the consequences of even a seemingly minor error may be grave and are irrevocable.”


Boies said that he and his client Giuffre are readying for a protracted process. “It’s a very important step toward making the information that the court has available to the public,” he said. “It’s only a first step.”

That’s a big one in what I’m saying: it could take along time for the 2,000 pages to be made public after they were unsealed. What does that mean?

Here’s Julie K. Brown once more:

The New York case, filed in 2015, was brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claims that she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to wealthy and powerful politicians, lawyers, academics and government leaders when she was underage. Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation after Maxwell publicly denounced her as a liar.


The case was settled in Giuffre’s favor in 2017, several sources have told the Herald. Nearly all the documents filed in connection with the case, however, were sealed [..] The Herald, as part of a November investigation called “Perversion of Justice,” went to court to unseal all the records in January. A lower court ruled against the newspaper, and the appeals court heard arguments by the Herald, Cernovich and Dershowitz in March.

This is all very recent stuff, not the 12-year old case for which Epstein settled in 2008. That doesn’t seem to bode well for him.

In its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that a lower district court erred when it issued a blanket sealing of the case, which essentially allowed all the parties to file everything under wraps.“The District Court failed to review the documents individually and produce ‘specific, on-the-record findings that sealing is necessary to preserve higher values.’ Instead, the District Court made generalized statements about the record as a whole. This … was legal error,’’ said Judge Jose A. Cabranes, writing for the three-member panel.


The court, in a 2-1 decision, said the portion of the case involving summary judgment materials (167 documents, 2,000 pages) should be unsealed forthwith, except for minor redactions. The balance of the case history — involving perhaps thousands of additional pages — will be reviewed by the lower court. In her dissent, Judge Rosemary Pooler concurred with unsealing the documents, but disagreed with how they should be reviewed.

But now we get to the crux. Between the lines, there’s this ‘threat’ that reviewing and redacting the 2,000 pages could take a very long time. And since Epstein has ace lawyers, it might even take years.

Realizing that, I started asking myself: why did Epstein fly his private plane -back- from Paris to NJ Teterboro airport, where he was arrested, on July 6. While 3 days prior, a New York federal appeals court ordered the unsealing of up to 2,000 pages of judicial documents “that are expected to show evidence relating to whether New York financier Jeffrey Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, were recruiting underage girls and young women as part of an international sex trafficking operation.”

I’m still asking myself. Didn’t he know he’d be arrested? Seems a bit far-fetched. The man pays tons of money to have connections everywhere. He’s a registered sex-offender (though only level-1, not -3, thanks to Acosta). He’s a wounded animal. Presumably he did know. The court order 3 days earlier to unseal the 2,000 pages would have been a big red flashing sign, and there’s no way he didn’t know about it.

So why fly back? Did his lawyers enter into some deal to redact the pages in a way they could control? That would sound very much like what happened in the 2008 plea deal. Did they agree beforehand on what Epstein would face conviction wise? There was a report that, through his legal team, he offered to name names if he could get off with a 5-year prison term. What do you call that kind of thing, reverse blackmail?

 

The SDNY, which ordered Epstein’s July 6 arrest, must have found something new to build a case on, it can’t be the pre-2008 stuff, that wouldn’t be legal. Did they find this new evidence in the 2,000 pages? Not entirely impossible, I would venture. What’s also an option is that they talked to people involved in the investigation prompted by Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s allegations vs Epstein and Maxwell, before the docs were sealed.

You’re an ADA, you seek out a detective or your own predecessor, and you say: what do you remember was in there? I can totally see that.

So I remain with two questions: why did Epstein return to the US from an alleged multi-week stay in Paris mere days after a federal appeals court ordered 2,000 pages unsealed that can only possibly be damaging to him (or some of his rich and powerful friends), or they wouldn’t have been sealed.

Second question: why is this playing out when it is, as in today? Who ordered this? Was it Trump? He appears to be one of the few people in the rich New York/Florida scene who doesn’t have much to fear from Epstein and his potential blackmail schemes. I base that on the -pretty well documented- fact that Trump threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago on 2011. He wouldn’t have done that if Epstein had anything on him. I wouldn’t rule out Epstein chasing Ivanka back then either.

 

One more item: the most amusing thing about Epstein is that not a single source/person can say how he made his money. That’s a topic for a next essay, but there’s this: 20 years after -ostensibly-, leaving Bear Stearns Epstein turns up as a director for one of their SIV’s.The vehicle was called Liquid Funding Ltd, and Epstein is listed as a director and chairman. The entire vehicle went stone dead, as did Bear. But Jeffrey did not.

Bear’s 10-K: At November 30, 2002, the total assets of this entity (Liquid Funding, Ltd.) approximated $900 million. The Company’s maximum exposure to loss as a result of its investment in this entity is approximately $5.0 million. Epstein’s Financial Trust Co. had a $121 million investment in hedge fund firm DB Zwirn & Co., which shut down in 2008, and was also a major investor in Bear Stearns’s High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund

 

Epstein could have opted to stay in France, or fly to his Virgin Islands estate. Or anywhere really. But he chose to fly to Teterboro to be arrested. Why?