Hope You Didn't Forget Those Epstein Files!
Congress, victims, and your Wonkette sure haven't!
With all of this chaotic remaking of the new world order going on, did everybody forget about those Epstein files? Now that topic seems almost as refreshing as a lemony sorbet (with a pube in it).
Back on November 17, a discharge petition and the resulting vote passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act to compel the release of the files — which President Donald John Trump himself signed off on, after it was clear any veto of his would be overridden anyway — gave the Department of Justice 30 days to release them. That did not happen, though 100,000 files were dumped in a context-free stew on the DOJ website. Some appear legitimate, like court documents from civil lawsuits. Some are obviously not, like an AI video of “Epstein killing himself” in his cell, from 4Chan. And some are who the hell knows, like two reports from witnesses who suggest that the president is an accessory to murder of an infant and an underage victim, respectively.
And anyway then Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi had until last Saturday, January 3, to explain to Congress any redactions or withheld documents. But that didn’t happen either. And now Deputy AG/Trump’s former(?) personal lawyer Todd Blanche is whining that there are simply too many Epstein files, 5.2 million documents, for them to get released. CBS says the DOJ has gone through less than one percent of the files. Funny, because just last July Kash Patel and Dan Bongino went on Fox blinking like hostages to say there were NO Epstein files, no clients, Epstein didn’t kill himself, nothing to see here! And now there are too many, like Strega Nona’s magic pasta bowl! Very credible.
Dumbshit Todd Blanche now claims that there are more than 400 attorneys from the Justice Department in Washington, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida, and the Southern District of New York all working “around the clock” to try to sort through the files, to “protect victims,” and there still will not be any more released until January 20 or 21. And yet the DOJ still somehow managed to bungle and release documents with victims’ names unredacted anyway, and with people redacted who should not have been, like the Andrew formerly known as prince, and photos with Trump himself. And the DOJ is also withholding other stuff for no apparent or explained reason, like financial records, and grand jury minutes that a federal judge had already approved for release at the DOJ’s own request.
Eight of Epstein’s victims are now calling for the impeachment of Trump, Bondi, and Patel over the non-release, though of course there are not votes for that (yet). And 18 furious survivors have also signed an open letter calling for Congress to have open hearings, and blasting the DOJ for having no communications with victims at all.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also wants the Senate to initiate legal action over the DOJ’s lawbreaking cover-upping, and Dick Durbin is investigating. Reps. Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Judiciary Committee, respectively, have also said they are “examining all legal options.” But who the fuck will stop us is this administration’s motto all day long!
Meanwhile, on December 24, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined 11 Democrats signing a letter urging Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume to audit the Justice Department’s compliance. And Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie said they are “intervening” with the Southern District of New York and asking the court to appoint a “special master” to ensure all of the documents are released.
Holy shit, what is in there that is so bad? And how is it even possible that one person could generate so much documentation in a lifetime? At this point, it is fair to speculate wildly, and assume the worst!
Or another option might be to listen to the more than one thousand survivors and believe them, like Maria Farmer, who reported Epstein and Trump for creepy behavior to the FBI twice, in 1996 and 2006, and was ignored. Or Sports Illustrated model Stacey Williams, who “has described how Mr. Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while Mr. Epstein — whom she was then dating — watched,” and described the pair’s activities as “trophy hunting,” with herself being the trophy. Or listen to Trump, who has always wished Ghislaine Maxwell well and never said a single word of support for Epstein’s victims.
Or, a functioning Department of Justice could more closely examine the many names that have come out since then. Ghislaine Maxwell offered up a few to Blanche, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who does not even deny hanging out with the guy (and sure is nonstop obsessed with children’s genitals and teenagers’ sperm). But this is Trump’s America, justice is now the Pammy Jo and Todd Show. And those two could not make it any clearer that no such further investigation will be happening. Except of any Democrats, of course.
But here’s a bit that seems glossed over that is worth talking about: more emerging evidence of Epstein’s close ties to tech bros, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sergey Brin of Google, and others. Being mentioned of course does not mean that any of these people partook in the activities on offer at Kid Rape Island or any other Epstein venues. But there’s no doubt these guys sure as shit kept in contact with Epstein for many years after his 2008 conviction.
Remember Jes Staley, Epstein’s personal banker who visited pedo island on his 90-foot boat, and the New Mexico Zorro ranch that Epstein hoped to turn into some kind of breeding farm for his superior genes, Elon Musk-ily? Files reveal that not only did Staley know about Epstein’s conviction, he even visited Epstein while Epstein was serving his sentence! And it was a profitable visit. Epstein referred many of his friends to Staley, who then brought them into JP Morgan as clients, including Brin, Musk, and Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates of Microsoft. And, in a deposition in the US Virgin Islands’ lawsuit against JP Morgan, Staley also helpfully provided a list of people Epstein had introduced or referred to him as a potential client.
And in Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition to Todd Blanche last year, she noted that she met Elon Musk at a three-to-four-day party for Google co-founder Sergey Brin around 2010 or ‘11, on the island of somebody with the Dickensian (or H.G. Wellsian) name of Dr. Pigozzi, who’s revealed in other context clues to be Dr. Jean Pigozzi, an Italian businessman. Pigozzi was also photographed in 2011 at a tech dinner with Epstein, along with tedious hack/New York Times columnist David Brooks, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, Google software engineer Lori Park, and Marissa Mayer, who went on to serve as CEO of Yahoo from 2012 to 2017.
And messages from X show that in March of 2024, one Cassandra Sorrentino was messaging Musk to sign a “Standard Epstein and FTCA [Federal Tort Claims Act] retainer JPA [Joint Provisional Agreement]” on behalf the Marsh Law firm, which also represents survivors, including Annie and Maria Farmer. Why would Musk want to retain said firm himself? And in 2023 Musk was also subpoenaed in US Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase & Co.
And Epstein had bragged that he had advised Musk after his shitposting on Twitter/X had sent Tesla shares plummeting in 2022. Also Epstein’s calendar showed that Elon was planning to visit his island December 6, 2014, though it’s unknown if that visit ever happened, and Musk says it didn’t. Though in 2019 he did admit to visiting Epstein’s house “years ago” with Talulah Riley, which would mean some time after 2008, when they met. And it is still not proven or disproven yet whether a message that had been circulating online about Epstein asking Musk if he and Ghislaine met up for Kung Fu practice is real. (Musk denies accepting any financial advice from Epstein, and indeed he might not have! Epstein got his start as a confidence-man scammer, and was well known to claim to be a close advisor to people he actually barely even knew.)
FLASHBACK:
Still, kind of funny that those two were much closer than Musk ever let on, especially after Musk flooded his hellsite with about 35 posts on Trump being in the Epstein files and doing a coverup after their messy breakup in July, as if it had somehow escaped Musk’s notice until then that Trump and Epstein were best friends for more than a decade. A sample:
Though Trump and Musk have since reconciled, and Musk was at Mar-a-Lago for New Year’s. Trigger warning, Lara Trump singing:
Hope he took that kid off his shoulders before he got into another fistfight with a member of Trump’s Cabinet!
And then in a strange coincidence, over the weekend Grok, X’s chatbot, started letting users alter images with its AI, which they quickly employed to produce Child Sexual Abuse Material and other assorted deepfake nudies. France is investigating.
And there’s Peter Thiel. In between investigating the antichrist and being JD Vance’s sugardaddy and funding his political rise, he and Epstein were quite close. In 2015 and 2016, as in seven years after Epstein’s first arrest, Epstein put $40 million into a fund Thiel co-owns, Valar Ventures, which is worth more than $170 million today. And in 2014 Epstein wrote to Thiel, “that was fun, see you in 3 weeks!” And in 2018, Epstein was urging Thiel, “Dec visit me Caribbean.” Thiel says that he never visited the island.
There’s Bill Gates, who Staley also claims Epstein introduced him to. Epstein appeared to attempt to extort Gates in 2017 into donating to a charitable fund that Epstein was setting up at JPMorgan (and that Epstein would get a cut of), by threatening to reveal an affair Gates allegedly had in his late 50s with a very young looking 20-something Russian bridge player. Gates didn’t do it, though, and days before he died, Epstein changed his will to make Gates’s advisor Boris Nikolic a backup executor, which Nikolic says was a final “fuck you” retaliatory move at Gates that neither he nor Gates knew anything about beforehand.
There’s Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and donor to Democrats, who admitted to visiting Pedo Island to do fundraising for MIT, though he claims nothing untoward happened, and he has been pushing for full transparency. Hoffman has had to hire extra security, he says, after Elon Musk falsely claimed he was an Epstein client. That blame-the-Democrats also happens to be exactly what Epstein predicted to Steve Bannon Trump would do about the E. Jean Carroll case: “Trump’s move now, Epstein theorized, would be to deflect from this story by reviving the rape charges against Bill Clinton.”
Are there any tech guys who didn’t have some kind of connection to Epstein after his arrest? Guess when raising money is one’s job, it pays to not Google one’s dinner companions, even when you are Google, and to turn a blind eye to any potential funders flying around everywhere with a group of emotional-support girl-children.
Epstein, of course, made his fortune as a confidence-man scammer by implying he was more connected than he actually was, until he actually was well-connected. He leveraged tenuous connections into real ones that involved rich people like Leon Black and L Brands CEO Les Wexner giving him billions of their dollars to play with, even though Epstein never graduated college and only had five years of experience as a trader at Bear Stearns. And vice-versa, Epstein invested millions of his own with acquaintances like his ex-girlfriend’s husband Glenn Dubin (who has been named by victims and witnesses as a perpetrator, though has never been charged with any crime), Thiel, and hedge fund manager Daniel Zwirn’s D.B. Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund.
What other wonderful secrets did these ageless enigmas share? We will surely never know if Team Pedo Coverup has their way! But it is mighty weird and notable how so many of these men remain close to Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party to this day. Sure makes you wonder if the files-coverup going on right in front of everybody’s face is only about Trump, or if there are other associates who Trump might have made quid pro quos with to protect, in exchange for donating to his inauguration fund, or buying some TrumpCoins, or whatever.
Though none of it yet explains why the New York Times literally covered up evidence of Trump’s ties to Epstein, even as Epstein was sending them salacious details. Still no “Sulzberger” in the files yet!
It’s a big cabal, and one thing is for sure, the rich really are different from you or me. Not sure who the artist is in this TikTok video, but, nailed it. TL;DW: once you’ve bought everything else, what is left as a gift for the man who has everything but child sex slaves? Won’t somebody think of the needs of billionaires and the sucking vortexes where their souls ought to be?
[PBS / Daily Beast archive link / WSJ gift link / NYT gift link]
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From Paul Krugman today, January 6th:
"... American fascism is on the march, and anyone who balks at saying that clearly, who makes excuses and pretends that Trump and the people he brought in aren’t monsters, is deeply unpatriotic. If we are to have a chance at saving democracy, our first duty must be clarity. No sanewashing, no bothsidesing. Only facing the horrible truth can set us free."
OT: This is a story about choices.
I probably would have lived and died without ever hearing of Jessica Plichta, age 22, a Michigan day care teacher and peace activist, if the cops hadn’t arrested her for using her right to free speech. Ms. Plichta chose to use her right to free speech to talk in a public space about what she had seen at a peace conference in Venezuela she had recently helped organize. Big deal, people do that every day. But some little men decided to make an example by getting her in trouble.
Now I know exactly who she is and what she’s about. Nice job, cops. She’s famous and you ain’t.