Dave Collum: 2019 Year in Review (Part 2)

thomas · December 21, 2019, 5:45am

If you’ve not yet read Part 1, click here to do so. The whole enchilada can be downloaded as a single PDF here or viewed in parts via the hot-linked contents as follows:

Part 1

Part 2

The Jeffrey Epstein Affair

“Insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”
~ Larry Summers as told by Elizabeth Warren

Let’s take this one right to the hoop: The Epstein saga may be the biggest, most broadly based scandal in US history. Of course, it has some serious competition, but to use the logic of Peter Dale Scott, the Berkeley professor who cut his teeth studying drug cartels, once in a while you get fleeting images of what lurks in the political pipes down in the basement. Peter called it “deep politics” in 1996, what is now called the deep state or, according to Wikipedia,¹ a Conspiracy of the Loons. Previous peeks into the basement include the collapse of BCCI,² the Panama papers,³ Fast and Furious,⁴ the Iran-Contra scandal,⁵ and, for the nostalgic, a spate of assassinations.⁶ You couldn’t miss the Epstein saga (unless, of course, you are still chained in the basement by one of his friends), but our wokeness is highly variable and, by definition, poorly developed. The Tetris pieces fall slowly at first but quickly by the end. Amazon is already filling up with treatises by those who can type 300 words per minute. My sources are a combination of random news reports, daily searches of the keyword “Epstein” on Twitter, and a few particularly persistent sleuths including Michael Krieger (@Libertyblitz),⁷ Witney Webb (@_whitneywebb),⁸ and articles flying across Zerohedge (@zerohedge). While reading this chapter let’s play Jeopardy—“Alex: I’ll take ‘WTF?’ for $500”—or maybe even Bizarro Bingo wherein you place a ‘✓’ every time something just got really weird.

I was only vaguely aware of Jeff Epstein until Michael Cernovich (@Cernovich) started howling on Twitter about how he had teamed up with Alan Dershowitz at Harvard and Julie Brown (@jkbjournalist) at the Miami Herald to win a 4-year FOIA suit to pry open a formerly sealed 2015 civil case.⁹ First question: How and why would you seal a civil case? I had just started the deep dive when only a few days later the Federales indicted Jeff for grotesque acts of pervishness having to do with trafficking in underage girls (12–15 years old), many from former Soviet bloc countries. This was Subway Jared ordering off the kiddie menu on a grand scale. It seemed to me that the FOIA loss may have triggered the indictment.

James Comey’s daughter was assigned to be prosecutor (✓).¹⁰ Alex Acosta, the judge who let Epstein’s 2005 conviction of sex trafficking lead to a wrist slap (house arrest) and sealed records¹¹ eventually became Labor Secretary under Trump (✓). Once the story broke, Acosta decided to spend quality time with his family. The casual observer quickly learned that Epstein had been flying pervs (and hopefully some non pervs given the sheer numbers) on his private Mile-High Club’s jet liner, the Lolita Express, to Orgy Island, an elaborate underage petting zoo. We were quickly told that Bill Clinton was a Platinum Club Member.¹² There’s a shocker.

"Boss: de plane!”...”Yes Tattoo: unshackle the girls."

Jeff had humble roots. After working summers as a farmhand choking the chickens, he was hired to teach math at an elite private girls school in New York City...despite not having a college degree. His new employer was Donald Barr, the father of Bill Barr, our current Attorney General (✓). Soon thereafter, they both moved on to higher callings.¹³ (Bill Barr’s law firm also defended Jeff in a previous brush with the law, forcing Bill to recuse himself from the forthcoming execution prosecution; ✓)¹⁴ Jeff’s job as a high school teacher naturally catapulted him to a few non-descript jobs on Wall Street, allowing him to accrue an estimated billion-dollar nest egg without anybody on Wall Street actually knowing who he was (✓). Leslie Wexner, founder of Victoria’s Secret, is said to be his only client and appears to have given Epstein power of attorney and handed over his $100 million NYC condo to Jeff (✓).¹⁵ In a pay-it-forward moment, Jeff was a seminal investor in the Clinton Global Initiative (last ✓; you are on your own from here.)¹⁶ Harvard and MIT also got millions.¹⁷ A 2003 story in the Harvard Crimson painted Jeff as a mysterious billionaire with a not-for-profit foundation: "Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers.¹⁸ The two serve together on the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations." The Trilateral Commission? That's real?

Dershowitz, Epstein, Trivers, and Summers

Epstein’s Black Book including over a thousand names published by Gawker in 2015¹⁹ has now been scrutinized.²⁰Cronies of special note included billionaire Wexner, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Woody Allen, the Duke of York Prince Andrew, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, Bill Gates, Larry Summers, Andrew Cuomo, former Prime Minister of Israel and current Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ehud Barak, George Stephanopoulos, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Charlie Rose (who used Epstein as a talent scout for his interns),²¹ financier Ron Perelman, modeling mogul Jean Luc Brunel, ex-labor minister Peter Mandelson, Adnan Khashoggi (arms dealer and brother of the New York Times reporter Jamal Khashoggi who got fed to the camels by the Saudis last year),²² Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (suspected to be the “prime minister” alluded to in released court transcripts),²³ and Mr. Rogers. (Just ✓-ing to see if you are still awake.)

Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times suggested we would soon know “how rotten our rulers really are”.²⁴ Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig suggested that, “anybody who helped Epstein in any way needs to get a lawyer and get scared.”²⁵ But who did the media focus on? That’s right: Clinton and Trump. Unfazed, The Donald piled on with a tweet using the #Clintonbodycount hashtag. (How do you not like that guy?) Joe Scarborough put his IQ on full display:

“I’m at a loss to understand or explain Mr. Epstein’s lifestyle.”
~ Prince Andrew on the rape lifestyle

Then there is Ghislaine Maxwell—known as “Gizz” by her closest friends—the former daughter of media mogul and billionaire Robert Maxwell who mysteriously fell off his yacht and drowned in 1991.²⁶ Gizz was Jeff’s main pimpette, rounding up girls for “modelling” gigs, apparently with the help of modelling mogul Jun Luc Brunel.²⁷ She was also charged with showing the little darlings (using dolls, of course) where Jeff and his buddies liked to be touched.²⁸

Enough of the obtuseness. Epstein was not just a world-class perv. He was running a blackmail operation in which men of wealth and power were lured into “honey traps”,²⁹ filmed releasing dopamine into their own skulls and other biofluids into the damsels’ skulls.³⁰ After Jeff’s 2005 arrest, a police video tour of his house showed copious mildly erotic wall art, photos of famous people, and a painting of Gizz (Maxwell that is).³¹ Most notably, the plethora of bedrooms each had attached private bathrooms fully stocked in toiletries and neatly stacked towels. What was missing was evidence somebody lived there. Piles of crap indicative of human occupancy were absent. It was not a time capsule of somebody’s life. It looks like a B&B (Brothel & Breakfast).

Next question: How do you blackmail wealthy and powerful men without committing suicide by nail-gun shots to the head and keeping your entry in “Who is Still Who”? Epstein is said to have used strong-arm tactics on occasion,³² but can you really bully the Clintons and their cronies? More questions: How do you get convicted of trafficking underaged girls (at least 34 according to the FBI),³³ get off with 8 months of house arrest over the protestations of the lead prosecutor,³⁴ and talk the judge into sealing the case? How do you get subsequent civil cases brought by the victims sealed as well? Recently released partial transcripts of the civil cases include testimony of victims describe being raped by famous people that I will not mention because they have law degrees.³⁵ Where is Mariska Hargitay and the SVU for Christ’s sake? The civil court judges are mandated by law to pass felonious behavior to the authorities. (I actually learned that from Judge Wapner in a People’s Court episode. No joke.) You also could imagine that post-conviction Epstein might be persona non grata among the elite interested in keeping up appearances for the public. Usually sex offenders get banished to trailer parks clustered with other sex offenders miles from elementary schools. His ties with the appropriately named “Prince Albert”, Ehud Barak, George Stephanopoulos, and a host of others stayed strong and in plain sight.³⁶ Hold that thought.

“Dear Bureau of Prisons: Please get Jeffrey Epstein to a super Max prison pronto, or the people who want him dead will make sure we never know the truth. ACT NOW!”
~ Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter)

Figure 23. Humor from the Meme Team predating Jeff’s death by 30 days.

The authorities put Epstein in a high-security prison that had one suicide in 21 years, and even that one was a convicted mobster who may have been escorted to the light.³⁷ The most famous prisoner in the world stewed in a cell reading articles about Whitey Bulger and getting visits by female lawyers (with benefits) lacking legal documents but with attributes the other lawyers and guards found distracting.³⁸

"If somebody tried to commit suicide, I don't think two more weeks in jail would improve his view on life."
~ Trevor Noah

I muttered in my infamous QTR podcast booted off YouTube for excessive truthiness that Epstein would never testify.³⁹ Even the mainstream media couldn’t miss the implications. About a week later Epstein was found unconscious on the floor of his jail cell with marks on his neck suggesting assault, attempted suicide, or a stunt. He was immediately put on suicide watch in the special housing unit (SHU). This is no ordinary cell. The bed is a slab with no mechanism to attach anything.⁴⁰ Your clothes and linens are specially designed to tear under the weight of a person. (We call it “paper”.) You would have better luck hanging yourself with toilet paper, choking yourself to death with your bare hands, or drowning yourself in the sink. Jeff had a roommate by policy,⁴¹ guards were instructed to check on him every 15 minutes, and security cameras watched him 24/7.

“But who would not wonder about foul play? With all the people who’d want him dead?... This whole thing is a big stinkin’, fumin’ hunk of foul-up.”
~ Peggy Noonan

At urgings of lawyers claimed to be working for him (but surely for somebody), he was taken off suicide watch, his roommate was pulled, the guards decided that even the standard 30-minute (not 15-minute) checks were optional, and the cameras broke themselves. It was at that propitious moment Jeff gasped his last gasp, but not before filling out a will making Bill Gates’s former science adviser Boris Nikolic, a 49-year-old venture capitalist, as a backup executor.⁴² Nobody was more surprised by the suicide than Jeff.

“If we were living in a paranoid fantasy universe, I would be very suspicious about the Epstein suicide, even about whether it was really suicide. And you know what? The Epstein case itself shows that we are kind of living in a paranoid fantasy universe.”
~ Paul Krugman on Epstein suicide (and finally admitting what his world is like)

“What does the word suicide mean in the phrase suicide WATCH? Who was watching? Did they fall asleep? Did the camera malfunction? Was there camera surveillance? Who was he about to implicate? This is very questionable. Committing suicide on suicide watch doesn’t happen.”
~ Rudy Giuliani

Professional reputations and caution were cast aside long enough for every media pundit to yell bullshit. A former member of an Italian paramilitary police force reached out to tell me the suicide was impossible “without torching everybody in the chain of command.” Clinton memes flourished. (You’ve got to feel some sympathy for the Clintons; it is hard to lose 56 friends and acquaintances to suicide.)⁴³ Whitney Webb (see below) noticed that the media not only seemed stunned but noticeably lacking in the homogenized talking points that often follow events needing perception management.⁸ Octogenarian coroner to the stars, Michael Baden, who cut his teeth as a young punk on the JFK assassination and testified for OJ, was called in by Jeff’s attorneys to oversee the autopsy⁴⁴ and to give the nattering nabobs of negativism something to natter about. Jeff’s hyoid bone had been broken, which is said to be common in strangulations but rare in hangings.⁴⁵ The obvious conclusion is that he strangled himself.

“Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused me for years...Finish what you started...We are survivors and the pursuit of justice should not abate.”
~ Sarah Ransome, Epstein rape victim and sex slave, to prosecutors in court

A coherent plotline was slowly created retrospectively, but not without a lot of script editing and revision. After initial reports said Jeff was found stone cold dead,⁴⁶ revisions surfaced claiming the guards attempted to revive him while shrieking “breathe, Epstein, breathe.”⁴⁷ Great script writing, guys. The guards were also blamed for the screwup but said to be overworked on multiple shifts of overtime.⁴⁸ The cameras remained broken owing to underfunding.⁴⁹ (A prison guard told me a camera would be fixed within hours in any prison.) A picture of Epstein being wheeled out of the hospital on a gurney with an oxygen mask into a hospital (not a morgue)⁵⁰ backed the changed narrative. Articles soon began appearing about how common it is for inmates to die by suicide in jails.⁵¹

The FBI finally got around to raiding Orgy Island with great fanfare after he died⁵² (but not before a $100K cement mixer had been delivered to the island.⁵³) What were they waiting for? What did they find? We don’t know much, but the following sofa-sized painting certainly is fetching:

The media, of course, even patched that up by finding the person who modeled for the painting⁵⁴ because Bill may be a perv, but he would never be caught dead in that outfit. (The painting also hung itself up while humming “Devil with the Blue Dress On”.)

Eventually Epstein was buried at sea consistent with his devout religious views. OK: He cremated himself. Sorry: I get carried away. He is said to be in an unmarked grave (true)⁵⁵ fitted with a ball gag and butt plug dressed in his best go-to-church leathers. (There I go again.) The case against Jeff was, according to standard protocol, dismissed in a court of law, which was witnessed by more than 30 Eastern European women with remarkably similar phenotypes (hot).⁵⁶ They were offered the opportunity to speak, but most were probably pondering safe spaces to hide. Shockingly, lawyers for a “John Doe” petitioned to reseal the cases that had been opened.⁵⁷ Why? Cernovich and Dershowitz may have gotten some serious dirt, but they have chosen not to make most of it public (That gets a ✓ from me).⁵⁸ After saying there were “serious irregularities” at the prison,⁵⁹ a recent script rewrite has Bill Barr claiming the cameras weren’t broken, and they showed the riveting footage of nobody entering Epstein’s cell.⁶⁰ Months later? Sure. I really want to believe Bill is a good guy—possibly the only good guy in politics—but there are a number of subtle hints to the contrary. It would be easy to fake a video showing nothing, and “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

So, let’s dive deeper. Whenever Jeff got in trouble, powerful people rushed to his aid. An intervention by Cyrus Vance, Manhattan District Attorney prompted Justice Ruth Pickholz to note, “I have to tell you I am a little overwhelmed, because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this.”⁶¹ Overwhelming evidence suggests that Jeff Epstein was, loosely speaking, a serial blackmailer being protected by his employers—intelligence agencies.⁶² Acosta said as much when he adjudicated the sweet deal with Epstein in 2005:⁶³

“I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”
~ Alex Acosta, judge in Epstein’s 2005 conviction in Florida and future Trump Labor Secretary, explaining the case sealing

Epstein’s lifelong employers may include the CIA and MI5, but Jeff was knee deep in the Israeli Mossad. Thus, “serial blackmailer” is way too simplistic. As noted by Mikel Krieger, compromising people and then helping them accrue wealth and power is a very effective protocol and sweet deal for all involved, especially when you throw in tropical vacations and free sex.⁷

Much of what follows was gleaned from expat Whitney Webb in Chile from a four-part series and affiliated interviews.⁸ Whitney is likely standing on the shoulders of others who have been following this plot for decades. Her writing and speaking style remind me of watching somebody gulping down a handful of Ritalin and then putting together a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Nevertheless, she seems honest and sincere about trying to get it right as she paints a partial picture that will send your eyeballs rolling to the back of their sockets.

*Trigger Warning*

I am about to talk about Israel’s secret intelligence group, the Mossad. To all you anti-Zionists, please keep the ideas percolating under those skin heads of yours to yourself. Just because you can reach me by email doesn’t mean you should.

I can’t do it justice, but here is Webb’s plot in highly abbreviated form. Epstein’s professional roots trace back to Meyer Lansky, the only bootlegger of the 20’s and 30’s—the Lawless Decade—who was neither killed nor convicted. He was the master of the honey trap—using young damsels to neuter and control powerful authorities. Whitney connects Lansky with the Bronfman family of Seagram’s fame, through to notorious political hitman Roy Cohn. Roy appears to be one of several lynchpins of this deep state theory, connecting Lansky in the past to Epstein in the modern era. Cohn was a bipartisan king maker and breaker for decades, weaponizing hedonism as the lawyer for Studio 54. He had close ties to J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare, the cardinal at the heart of the Church’s pedophile scandal, the legendary financier Marc Rich said to be an Israeli asset, and Italian mobsters. Roy is rumored to have ushered Reagan up the success ladder starting with the presidency of the screen guild to the presidency of the United States. Cohn trained Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, but Epstein appears to be Roy’s heir apparent, sharing many common friends and connections. Not unlike the risky drug lord, however, Jeff consumed his own product too enthusiastically.

The second key lynchpin is Gizz Maxwell and her father, Robert with his ✓-ered past. According to Seymour Hersh, Maxwell was a Mossad asset and being investigated for war crimes when he fell off his boat.⁶⁴ Gizz’s sister, Christine, works in a software company said to have Pentagon ties.⁶⁵ (I suspect all software companies have them.)

Robert Maxwell

Webb goes seriously deep as she links Ehud Barak and the Israeli Mossad with Silicon Valley. I suspect the Mossad is as influential as any of their intelligence brethren by benefitting from both a sovereign home base and religious ties to people in every country who are acutely aware of past and potentially future persecutions. Israel also happens to have a stupendous tech industry that provides software and hardware to the world, quite possibly with intelligence gathering capabilities. (Don’t think for a minute US domiciled tech companies aren’t doing the same.) Webb describes how Israel’s elite 8200 special ops group has populated high ranking positions in almost every company in Silicon Valley. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s ties to both Epstein and Silicon Valley seem to be beyond doubt.

Ehud Barack and friends photographed visiting the Epstein B&B

Jeff’s benefactors were either complicit or at least willfully blind to his dark habits. Access journalists like Barbara Walters and George Stephanopoulos maintained strong ties with Epstein well after the pedophile conviction. When Corey Feldman accused Hollywood of harboring pedophiles, Walters ripped into him rather than virtue-signaling condemnation, which would have been far more logical.⁶⁶ Even the Mossad and Harvey Weinstein sneak into this damned plot.⁶⁷

Harvard and MIT accepted Jeff’s donations despite pressures. MIT’s Media Group appears to be a cash cow even by university standards.⁶⁸ They laundered Epstein’s post-conviction donations as “anonymous” despite the squeals of a whistle blower inside the Lab.⁶⁹ Gates is said to have helped Epstein with his MIT relationship, but I presumed that to be superficial because Epstein knew everybody and certainly wanted access to Gates. The New York times, however, painted a much more detailed and sinister description of the Epstein-Gates connection.⁷⁰ With all this covert crap going on, Epstein would show up at the MIT group with a young bimbette on each arm in garish displays of Epsteinishness⁷¹ (no doubt a thrill for the MIT eggheads who probably haven’t made it to first base.) Heads have now rolled at the MIT Media Lab and apologies issued.⁷² The nagging unanswered question is what and for whom did MIT Media Lab and Harvard really do for that money?⁷³

“MIT Media Lab Agrees to Return All of Jeffrey Epstein’s Donated Girls”
~ The Onion

The stories and connections are endless. I’ve either completely lost you or piqued your interest enough to track down Webb’s articles and podcasts.⁸ There continue to be more plot thickeners than a Stephen King novel. Where was the media? Funny you should ask. Amy Robach got caught by Project Veritas on a hot mic complaining that they had the whole story—I doubt they had 10% of it—and that ABC completely buried the story.⁷⁴

“I’ve had this story for three years. I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts [Giuffre]...We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.'”
~ Amy Robach, ABC’s 20/20 Anchor

Of course, rather than asking why they buried such a great scoop, ABC went on a witch hunt to find the leaker who now works at CBS…well she did until CBS fired her despite her protestations of innocence.⁷⁵ I offer this public service announcement: The media is worthless. Hold that thought until the “Conclusion” section.

“Where is this Maxwell lady hiding? You believe nobody knows where she is? You’re an idiot…They’re thinking New York cares and L.A. cares but nobody else in America cares about this pervert and his fancy friends. They’re thinking it’s August, play it out, let the story sink in the sands of time.”
~ Peggy Noonan

Why has nobody else been indicted? Where is Gizz Maxwell? She was supposedly spotted in the In ‘N’ Out Burger Shop in LA (Figure 24),⁷⁶ posing with a book entitled, “The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives.” When recognized, she noted wryly, “Well, I guess this is the last time I’ll be eating here.” You can’t make this shit up! Actually, I think somebody did, but she has not been seen since.

Figure 24. Gizz and burgers.

“Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.”
~ Everybody with a brain stem

“Epstein didn’t kill himself” became a meme to be used at any opportunity, but I will see that meme and raise you one:

“Epstein isn’t dead.”

Social media quickly picked up on the fact that the guy on the gurney did not look like Epstein (Figure 25). The ear is seriously problematic as noted, but the noses don’t match at all. Now imagine you were Jeff with 40 years of intelligence experience and dirt on every powerful dirtbag in the world sitting in a jail awaiting trial. You just might say something like: “Get me outta here in one piece, or I will release the shitstorm that will send you all to the gallows.” It’s called a “Deadman’s switch” or “suicide switch.”⁷⁷ If he dies, hundreds of media outlets worldwide receive the dirt Snowden style. That’s how Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers. You couldn’t safely kill the guy. You’d have to put him in a witness protection program after serious surgical work.

Figure 25. Guy on gurney, Jeff Epstein, and Mystery Man.

And now for the funniest conspiracy theory in history. Who was that dude on the gurney? Funny you should ask. The third guy in Figure 25 died three weeks before Epstein. The newspapers reported “no cause of death provided.”⁷⁸ Pretty good likeness, eh? Ear seems right. He wouldn’t even be freezer burnt yet, and if the spooks who hatched the plan noticed the likeness they could even take the photo on the gurney when he died. Why wait? This mysterious Mets fan was also known to be up to his ass in nefarious dealings, what the newspapers called “unwelcome controversy” and “embarrassing business ventures” in Soviet bloc countries. Now for the punchline...wait for it...keep waiting...that is Tony Rodham, brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bwahahahaha! Ah Christ: I just wet myself again! I don’t even care if that story is totally fake. It is beyond entertaining. It would also be the first family member to contribute to the legendary Clinto

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part2/

hail · December 21, 2019, 11:19pm

Nothing glib. I just appreciate these summaries each year. Especially the irreverent tone.

jcbrand · December 23, 2019, 7:12pm

I read with grim fascination but also laughed out loud multiple times. My favourite Collum review so far, but perhaps also because this was such a crazy year?