This article uses a lot of words but misses an important point which is that Epstein was likely a master of blackmail.
For instance there is the strange story of Leslie Wexler who seemed to let Epstein run his whole life. I can only imagine that Wexler was willingly part of the festivities that Epstein put on and was later blackmailed or was possibly set up unknowingly. Either way as the head of a woman's clothing company Wexler had a lot to lose.
Wexler wasn't the only one, and if Epstein ever needed conspirators that is how he got them.
This article spends paragraphs claiming it's going to knock down conspiracy theories, then essentially concludes (I think, the writing is interminable) that Epstein was a skilled and systematic blackmailer who worked for the CIA. It doesn't even bother to address the interesting questions of who organized this; what the goals and results were; where the money came from; where the evidence went, etc.
ETA: According to the theory outlined in this post, someone ran a massive blackmail scheme against many of our society's most influential figures with help and backing from the CIA, and then those organizations protected Epstein from prosecution while ensuring that the blackmail evidence was carefully retained and kept out of public view following his death. If even partially true this is the most serious conspiracy theory of our time. Your only interest is in writing a skeptic piece about whether Epstein was murdered?
It's sort of the equivalent of when Noam Chomsky says, "sure, JFK and 9/11 may have been carried out by organized conspirators within the U.S. government, but it doesn't matter and there's no point interrogating it because it makes no difference from a policy perspective." In the cases where it's not outright disinfo it's a psychological defense mechanism, a way of ceding the bare minimum of ground to the conspiracy theorists which is demanded by the mountains of evidence, while still hiving it off from the rest of one's worldview.
> There are basically two mysteries regarding Jeffrey Epstein - the first is how he died, and the second is how he managed to get the plea bargain wherein he served twelve months in para-prison for creating a network of dozens of underage prostitutes.
Weird, I would have thought the third mystery was "How have all these billionaires, who are listed on the Lolita Express' flight logs, escape arrest and prosecution thus far?" or maybe "Why did the judge seal all information away?" OR MAYBE "Why did 'conspiracy theorists' know about these flight logs since the early 2000s and just now something happened?"
I'm sure there are plenty of rational conclusions that don't involve a global shadow cabal of kid fuckers throwing 2 of their idiots under the bus. Remember how #metoo stopped after harvey weinstein? lol me too, I'm sure hollywood is fixed now.
> Being on the flight log doesn't prove a crime.
Nah but it sure as shit warrants an investigation, something we won't get. I'm sure billy gates and willy clinton never did anything nefarious though :^))))
Aye, you and I agree there- "letting the facts get in the way of the truth".
Probably not, but not having them run for office means little when they can use the clinton foundation to continue to sway public and private sectors. Alas, I'm going down a rabbit hole here.
While you are correct that we likely cannot prove a lot of what is true, the OP article is playing a dangerous game. Anyone who claims to take a complex geopolitical underage sex trafficking cabal and boil it down to "two blase 'mysteries'" is doing nothing more than acting as controlled opposition. It's akin to saying "Don't look under the rug bro, let me just tell you what's under there. It's just two old m&m candies we swept under there. Don't look. let me tell you how boring it is".
Turns out that rug has a lot of nasty shit under it.
Absolutely. Anyone on that list has to be a huge piece of shit, and yes I believe the trump foundation continues to do the same shit.
Liberalism and its "HAH BUT TRUMP, GOTCHYA" mentality is such poison- you're a cancer unto yourself. All of these people run in the same circles, they use their money for the same or similar agendas (control), and ultimately they want all of us poor and enslaved (debt) for eternity. They're all mostly kid fuckers, too- look at trump's slew of weird comments about his daughter.
I am not your ally, but both of these groups are definitely our enemy. I hope you figure it out sooner rather than later :)
At this point the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2024 is Donald Trump, a man with extensive ties to Epstein going back decades, and who is on record issuing vague compliments about his sexual predation.
What if the crime was violating house arrest? What if you say, while under oath, you weren't at some of the manifests destinations, and the crime was perjury?
Being on a flight log is evidence you were on a flight. Jury's (or Judges if you don't want a Jury) decide guilt.
With everything known surrounding the destination of some of these flights, It is surprising the logs didn't lead to investigations into some of the serial passengers.
> What if the crime was violating house arrest? What if you say, while under oath, you weren't at some of the manifests destinations, and the crime was perjury?
OK then: being on the flight log doesn't prove the type of crimes alleged here. It can prove other types of crimes that aren't relevant to this discussion.
Your quote used the one unnecessary word and converted the rest to an ellipsis.
(I do find it funny that you did "Perhaps [...]" rather than "Perhaps . . . ." or "Perhaps [anything]", it's like, the point I was making can be reduced to the abstract notion of trailing-off dialogue lol)
"Perhaps" is a cheeky way to introduce my response to the "being on the flight log doesn't prove the type of crimes alleged here" part by providing the obvious types of crimes it would provide evidence for. (Like, if someone asks "Why isn't the elevator moving" and someone responds "perhaps it is because you didn't press the floor button"). I wasn't using it as some sort of way to convey support of action based on mere suspicion.
> With everything known surrounding the destination of some of these flights, It is surprising the logs didn't lead to investigations into some of the serial passengers.
Perhaps I do misunderstand.
What I get from rereading the thread is you entertained the possibility of investigative action based on suggestive association (people riding on a plane associated with crimes).
If that isn't a correct characterization, please correct me!
That low of a bar for investigative action would give prosecutors quite a weapon to harass almost anyone they wanted to target. Even a clearly dead end investigation can seriously impact someone's life and reputation.
The phrase "probable cause" isn't "suggestive association with cause" for a reason.
We kind of went on a tangent because my response was a bit too pedantic. I am just surprised, to my knowledge, nothing came of the manifests. I don't think they were a nothing burger.
Epstein's "Lolita Express" plane had a manifest of passengers for years of trips. Certain figures show up many times on flights with Epstein and his girls. Certain people on the list, or at least their spokesmen, publicly denied flying there (at least at first, eventually, the denials started including more and more caveats).
A lot of celebrities went to Epstein's New York parties, but the private plane is different. You have a select few individuals on a convicted pedophile's plane, a plane used to transport the underaged women. Like, if it was Pablo Escobar's drug plane flying back and forth from his drug island, is it there probable cause to investigate the passengers activities on the plane and island? Perhaps that is too extreme of a comparison, I do not know what the investigators know. Maybe they did investigate and determined it to be benign. I am just saying I am surprised nothing came of it.
I am also surprised nothing came of Epstein's hundreds of cameras at his properties... I read Giuffre's book draft (when it was in evidence in one of the cases). I know it is just her word, but it just seems like Epstein recorded so many things, that I am surprised that no one was prosecuted including no-named people. Also, it is an extremely disturbing read, a lot of it is even pre-Epstein, I had no idea she was trafficked multiple times (google FBI Ron Eppinger)
Outside of the legal investigation, I am not even sure what Occam's razor would suggest here. The FBI seized computers and camera systems from his properties. I think it is unlikely everything found was benign. Only the recruiter of sex trafficked minors was prosecuted (outside Epstein). This probably biases my view, I feel there was a lack of investigating going on, so maybe I am too biased to have a reasonable opinion on the manifests.
I agree - it seems unlikely that incriminating recordings or other records were not found.
But perhaps he was as careful to avoid storing anything incriminating, as he was at avoiding any hint of blackmail that would have killed off access to new powerful people, in all his social engineering.
He was evil, but he was very smart. He seems to have preferred using carrots, good and evil, to expand his influence. Not sticks.
>>>> Being on the flight log doesn't prove a crime.
>>> What if the crime was violating house arrest? What if you say, while under oath, you weren't at some of the manifests destinations, and the crime was perjury?
>> OK then: being on the flight log doesn't prove the type of crimes alleged here. It can prove other types of crimes that aren't relevant to this discussion.
> Perhaps the types of crimes the that deal with underaged trafficked girls on planes and/or islands?
It's a crime to traffic an underaged girl, it's also a crime to have sex with one, it might even be a crime to knowingly fail to aid one, but it isn't a crime to be on the same plane as one or on a plane that previously transported one.
The manifest only proves the thing that isn't a crime.
It's also weird that you responded to me with crimes like statutory rape, when I already addressed that the manifest wasn't evidence of that, and the comment of yours I was responding to was talking about crimes (e.g. skipping house arrest) that aren't relevant.
Also, in the US at least, crimes have to be "proven beyond a reasonable doubt," and "he was on the plane of guy who was guilty" doesn't even come close to meeting that standard.
Were any of the people on the logs under house arrest at the time?
> What if you say, while under oath, you weren't at some of the manifests destinations, and the crime was perjury?
Then the log is evidence, but alone pretty weak evidence, definitely not sufficient for a conviction and likely not even enough, on its own to meet the probable cause standard ton sustain a charge.
> Being on a flight log is evidence you were on a flight.
Which generally isn't a crime.
> Jury's (or Judges if you don't want a Jury) decide guilt.
But, long before that, judges decide whether there is probable cause to even sustain charges, and you haven't really painted a map of anything that would suggest that that exists for anyone.
> With everything known surrounding the destination of some of these flights, It is surprising the logs didn't lead to investigations into some of the serial passengers
Making criminal investigations of particular individuals public prior to charges is generally a breach of protocol. Maybe they were investigated, and insufficient evidence to charge was found. Maybe there are still notionally open investigations stuck at dead ends waiting for a break.
You are surprised by something that is completely your own assumption.
I responded below to a different comment if you want to continue the conversation.
We may have to just agree to disagree, because I think your perjury point is, at best, a bad guess, and at worst, disingenuous because we are not a jury with this fact pattern and thus cannot come to a conclusion either way.
I'll add I think it is a bad guess because, all things being equal, if under oath you said you weren't on a plane, and the flight's manifest comes to evidence with your name on it in one or more flights... if I was a juror, that is enough evidence for me (without counter evidence as I implied with "all things being equal". There are ways to argue against it, like dementia/Alzheimer's for intent or someone with the same name for the underlying fact, but that is adding information to the situation). This is particularly subjective, but I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of someone who reasonably doubts the accuracy of a passenger manifests. I am a lay person when it comes to manifests, so perhaps they are casually-written documents that aren't taken seriously. I view them as quite the opposite (mistakes are possible, but evidence of the contrary would be needed).
I wonder if it’s sensible to make a distinction between private and public air travel. For private, I could see it being more of a “who is allowed to fly on this jet” rather than actual attendance.
From Epstein's point of view what reason would he have not to kill himself. He was NEVER going to leave that cell alive. He could drag it out for the rest of his natural life, or he could check out immediately.
I do think the guards knew/suspected he would do this and went out of their way not to interfere.
> Most people, probably quite reasonably, just take what they have been told about their institutions their entire life as a baseline. If you ask them as they're walking down the street, they probably won't be able to come up with principled objections to 9/11 truthers. They will reject it (rightly or wrongly) because they need to go to work, and it's simply not in the category of things they're willing to believe.
So the government can conspire to run a underage sex ring by proxy through one of its spies, but the government conspiring to kill a person in prison is imposible.
I'm not charmed by this conspiracy theory, it's quite possible Epstein killed himself, but I really hate this kind of performative skepticism.
> The Attorney General, the highest ranking law enforcement official in the country, personally reviewed the footage surrounding Epstein's prison block to confirm this for himself.
The Attorney General whose father got Epstein his start in life by hiring him to teach math at the prestigious Dalton School with zero qualifications? The Attorney General who spearheaded much of the coverup and spiking of investigations surrounding Iran Contra? That attorney general?
"Let's take the business of drug dealing for example, where due to your research you find the vast majority of people are caught via compelled police informants."
If that's true, why are drugs still a problem when we've had the War on Drugs for decades?
As to the "fact" that secrets cannot be kept, especially in a large group, Edward Snowden proved this to be false.
> If that's true, why are drugs still a problem when we've had the War on Drugs for decades?
You seem to be reading his claim thusly: "The vast majority of drug dealers get caught; this happens because they were fingered by informants". This certainly does not seem plausible.
I took that sentence differently: "When we look at the subset of drug dealers who got caught, we can see that most of them were arrested after being identified by informants."
My outstanding (answerable) questions would be. When his New York apartment was raided by the FBI, it was reported they seized binders of optical discs, the titles generally fitting the format [man's name] with young [woman's name]. What's on the discs?
Vicki Ward reported Acosta told her that he was told by someone "above his pay grade" to give Epstein the plea deal with the explanation that "Epstein belonged to intelligence."
Does Acosta deny he said that? Did Ward record the interview?
I find two "conspiracies" to successfully kill Epstein as potentially plausible.
The first is Epstein killed himself, but under coercion. Presumably a combination of flattery at his historical importance (in protecting powerful people and US security information threatened by his imprisonment), with dire and credible threats of what disturbing tragedy awaited him if he remained alive.
The second is just a partial explanation: That the government got cooperation from guards or others via appeals to patriotism. The motivation would not be to protect powerful people, but to help the US government protect confidentiality of critical information and relationships, key to US security, that Epstein's incarceration put in jeopardy.
The first seems more likely to me, if there was foul play, since it requires the least number of people doing the least number of things.
46 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 93.8 ms ] threadFor instance there is the strange story of Leslie Wexler who seemed to let Epstein run his whole life. I can only imagine that Wexler was willingly part of the festivities that Epstein put on and was later blackmailed or was possibly set up unknowingly. Either way as the head of a woman's clothing company Wexler had a lot to lose.
Wexler wasn't the only one, and if Epstein ever needed conspirators that is how he got them.
ETA: According to the theory outlined in this post, someone ran a massive blackmail scheme against many of our society's most influential figures with help and backing from the CIA, and then those organizations protected Epstein from prosecution while ensuring that the blackmail evidence was carefully retained and kept out of public view following his death. If even partially true this is the most serious conspiracy theory of our time. Your only interest is in writing a skeptic piece about whether Epstein was murdered?
Weird, I would have thought the third mystery was "How have all these billionaires, who are listed on the Lolita Express' flight logs, escape arrest and prosecution thus far?" or maybe "Why did the judge seal all information away?" OR MAYBE "Why did 'conspiracy theorists' know about these flight logs since the early 2000s and just now something happened?"
I'm sure there are plenty of rational conclusions that don't involve a global shadow cabal of kid fuckers throwing 2 of their idiots under the bus. Remember how #metoo stopped after harvey weinstein? lol me too, I'm sure hollywood is fixed now.
THE WORLD IS A STAGE, THIS IS ALL THEATER
Situations like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Giuffre_v._Prince_And...
which are one person's word against another are the most frustrating cases when it comes to getting justice.
I don't think we're going to see another Clinton run for public office again.
Probably not, but not having them run for office means little when they can use the clinton foundation to continue to sway public and private sectors. Alas, I'm going down a rabbit hole here.
While you are correct that we likely cannot prove a lot of what is true, the OP article is playing a dangerous game. Anyone who claims to take a complex geopolitical underage sex trafficking cabal and boil it down to "two blase 'mysteries'" is doing nothing more than acting as controlled opposition. It's akin to saying "Don't look under the rug bro, let me just tell you what's under there. It's just two old m&m candies we swept under there. Don't look. let me tell you how boring it is".
Turns out that rug has a lot of nasty shit under it.
Do you believe The Trump Foundation "continues to sway public and private sectors?"
Liberalism and its "HAH BUT TRUMP, GOTCHYA" mentality is such poison- you're a cancer unto yourself. All of these people run in the same circles, they use their money for the same or similar agendas (control), and ultimately they want all of us poor and enslaved (debt) for eternity. They're all mostly kid fuckers, too- look at trump's slew of weird comments about his daughter.
I am not your ally, but both of these groups are definitely our enemy. I hope you figure it out sooner rather than later :)
Maybe if you didn't think everything was black and white, you wouldn't need melodramatic all-caps text so often.
Oddly, though, at the moment he's still running for the election of 2020, even though it's 2022.
Being on a flight log is evidence you were on a flight. Jury's (or Judges if you don't want a Jury) decide guilt.
With everything known surrounding the destination of some of these flights, It is surprising the logs didn't lead to investigations into some of the serial passengers.
> What if the crime was violating house arrest? What if you say, while under oath, you weren't at some of the manifests destinations, and the crime was perjury?
OK then: being on the flight log doesn't prove the type of crimes alleged here. It can prove other types of crimes that aren't relevant to this discussion.
This wasn't the manifests of a grand canyon sight seeing plane.
Suspicion of crime isn't crime.
Actual crimes without enough evidence are not prosecutable.
Lots of people come into association with crimes, criminals, or simply suspicious circumstances, who have not actually committed a crime.
"Perhaps" is a cheeky way to introduce my response to the "being on the flight log doesn't prove the type of crimes alleged here" part by providing the obvious types of crimes it would provide evidence for. (Like, if someone asks "Why isn't the elevator moving" and someone responds "perhaps it is because you didn't press the floor button"). I wasn't using it as some sort of way to convey support of action based on mere suspicion.
Perhaps you missed that?
Perhaps I do misunderstand.
What I get from rereading the thread is you entertained the possibility of investigative action based on suggestive association (people riding on a plane associated with crimes).
If that isn't a correct characterization, please correct me!
That low of a bar for investigative action would give prosecutors quite a weapon to harass almost anyone they wanted to target. Even a clearly dead end investigation can seriously impact someone's life and reputation.
The phrase "probable cause" isn't "suggestive association with cause" for a reason.
Epstein's "Lolita Express" plane had a manifest of passengers for years of trips. Certain figures show up many times on flights with Epstein and his girls. Certain people on the list, or at least their spokesmen, publicly denied flying there (at least at first, eventually, the denials started including more and more caveats).
A lot of celebrities went to Epstein's New York parties, but the private plane is different. You have a select few individuals on a convicted pedophile's plane, a plane used to transport the underaged women. Like, if it was Pablo Escobar's drug plane flying back and forth from his drug island, is it there probable cause to investigate the passengers activities on the plane and island? Perhaps that is too extreme of a comparison, I do not know what the investigators know. Maybe they did investigate and determined it to be benign. I am just saying I am surprised nothing came of it.
I am also surprised nothing came of Epstein's hundreds of cameras at his properties... I read Giuffre's book draft (when it was in evidence in one of the cases). I know it is just her word, but it just seems like Epstein recorded so many things, that I am surprised that no one was prosecuted including no-named people. Also, it is an extremely disturbing read, a lot of it is even pre-Epstein, I had no idea she was trafficked multiple times (google FBI Ron Eppinger)
Outside of the legal investigation, I am not even sure what Occam's razor would suggest here. The FBI seized computers and camera systems from his properties. I think it is unlikely everything found was benign. Only the recruiter of sex trafficked minors was prosecuted (outside Epstein). This probably biases my view, I feel there was a lack of investigating going on, so maybe I am too biased to have a reasonable opinion on the manifests.
But perhaps he was as careful to avoid storing anything incriminating, as he was at avoiding any hint of blackmail that would have killed off access to new powerful people, in all his social engineering.
He was evil, but he was very smart. He seems to have preferred using carrots, good and evil, to expand his influence. Not sticks.
>>> What if the crime was violating house arrest? What if you say, while under oath, you weren't at some of the manifests destinations, and the crime was perjury?
>> OK then: being on the flight log doesn't prove the type of crimes alleged here. It can prove other types of crimes that aren't relevant to this discussion.
> Perhaps the types of crimes the that deal with underaged trafficked girls on planes and/or islands?
It's a crime to traffic an underaged girl, it's also a crime to have sex with one, it might even be a crime to knowingly fail to aid one, but it isn't a crime to be on the same plane as one or on a plane that previously transported one.
The manifest only proves the thing that isn't a crime.
It's also weird that you responded to me with crimes like statutory rape, when I already addressed that the manifest wasn't evidence of that, and the comment of yours I was responding to was talking about crimes (e.g. skipping house arrest) that aren't relevant.
Also, in the US at least, crimes have to be "proven beyond a reasonable doubt," and "he was on the plane of guy who was guilty" doesn't even come close to meeting that standard.
Were any of the people on the logs under house arrest at the time?
> What if you say, while under oath, you weren't at some of the manifests destinations, and the crime was perjury?
Then the log is evidence, but alone pretty weak evidence, definitely not sufficient for a conviction and likely not even enough, on its own to meet the probable cause standard ton sustain a charge.
> Being on a flight log is evidence you were on a flight.
Which generally isn't a crime.
> Jury's (or Judges if you don't want a Jury) decide guilt.
But, long before that, judges decide whether there is probable cause to even sustain charges, and you haven't really painted a map of anything that would suggest that that exists for anyone.
> With everything known surrounding the destination of some of these flights, It is surprising the logs didn't lead to investigations into some of the serial passengers
Making criminal investigations of particular individuals public prior to charges is generally a breach of protocol. Maybe they were investigated, and insufficient evidence to charge was found. Maybe there are still notionally open investigations stuck at dead ends waiting for a break.
You are surprised by something that is completely your own assumption.
We may have to just agree to disagree, because I think your perjury point is, at best, a bad guess, and at worst, disingenuous because we are not a jury with this fact pattern and thus cannot come to a conclusion either way.
I'll add I think it is a bad guess because, all things being equal, if under oath you said you weren't on a plane, and the flight's manifest comes to evidence with your name on it in one or more flights... if I was a juror, that is enough evidence for me (without counter evidence as I implied with "all things being equal". There are ways to argue against it, like dementia/Alzheimer's for intent or someone with the same name for the underlying fact, but that is adding information to the situation). This is particularly subjective, but I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of someone who reasonably doubts the accuracy of a passenger manifests. I am a lay person when it comes to manifests, so perhaps they are casually-written documents that aren't taken seriously. I view them as quite the opposite (mistakes are possible, but evidence of the contrary would be needed).
I thought based on title that this was supposed to be non-magical. I am confused.
I do think the guards knew/suspected he would do this and went out of their way not to interfere.
To me it seems that such a choice on the part of the guards would amount to a serious dereliction of duty.
Why would they willful choose to do that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_Epstein#Discr...
So the government can conspire to run a underage sex ring by proxy through one of its spies, but the government conspiring to kill a person in prison is imposible.
I'm not charmed by this conspiracy theory, it's quite possible Epstein killed himself, but I really hate this kind of performative skepticism.
This was one of Umberto Eco's list of common features of fascism.
"The enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
The Attorney General whose father got Epstein his start in life by hiring him to teach math at the prestigious Dalton School with zero qualifications? The Attorney General who spearheaded much of the coverup and spiking of investigations surrounding Iran Contra? That attorney general?
"Let's take the business of drug dealing for example, where due to your research you find the vast majority of people are caught via compelled police informants."
If that's true, why are drugs still a problem when we've had the War on Drugs for decades?
As to the "fact" that secrets cannot be kept, especially in a large group, Edward Snowden proved this to be false.
You seem to be reading his claim thusly: "The vast majority of drug dealers get caught; this happens because they were fingered by informants". This certainly does not seem plausible.
I took that sentence differently: "When we look at the subset of drug dealers who got caught, we can see that most of them were arrested after being identified by informants."
Vicki Ward reported Acosta told her that he was told by someone "above his pay grade" to give Epstein the plea deal with the explanation that "Epstein belonged to intelligence."
Does Acosta deny he said that? Did Ward record the interview?
The first is Epstein killed himself, but under coercion. Presumably a combination of flattery at his historical importance (in protecting powerful people and US security information threatened by his imprisonment), with dire and credible threats of what disturbing tragedy awaited him if he remained alive.
The second is just a partial explanation: That the government got cooperation from guards or others via appeals to patriotism. The motivation would not be to protect powerful people, but to help the US government protect confidentiality of critical information and relationships, key to US security, that Epstein's incarceration put in jeopardy.
The first seems more likely to me, if there was foul play, since it requires the least number of people doing the least number of things.