Prince Andrew Arrested, Epstein Mythology, Reid Hoffman Files with Saagar Enjeti & Michael Tracey | All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

Okay, everyone, by popular demand, we're doing an all Epstein show today.

My besties are all on vacation for ski week, so I'm taking this on solo.

We have three different guests on who all have very different interpretations and opinions of the Epstein story.

Sagar and Jetty from Breaking Points, believes that the Epstein story shows that there is a quote-unquote Epstein class that operates above law and accountability.

They've used the story as an indictment of our ruling elites.

Michael Tracy is skeptical of about many of the most salacious claims about Epstein and questions whether they meet any kind of evidentiary standard.

He has criticized the media feeding frenzy over what he has called Epstein mythology.

And finally, Kevin Bass, a citizen journalist, has been tracking the release files and posting his findings on X, specifically in regards to Reid Hoffman, perhaps the figure in tech most closely associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

Some of it gets heated, but hopefully you'll come away with new perspectives and great information.

I felt like it was important to showcase a range of viewpoints on this issue.

I'm trying to keep an open mind, and I'll describe my own point of view at the end of the show.

And with that, here we go.

Sagar, let me start with you.

What is the import of the arrest of Prince Andrew in the UK this morning?

I mean, is this a case of show us the man and we'll tell you the crime?

I mean, obviously it seems kind of coincidental that not being arrested for misconduct in the epstein affair, he's being arrested on mishandling, i guess, trade secrets or public documents.

So obviously the timing of this is not coincidental.

No, it's certainly not coincidental, but i do believe that the facts do matter in this case and uh unfortunately, you know, for prince andrew, for lord mandelson, the former ambassador to the United States, from the UK as well, it is pretty clear cut that they did violate their official duties.

We should remember that the crux of this case involving Andrew is not just about some of the accusations that were made, although that is the genesis, let's say, of the investigation of the interest.

This is about Prince Andrew serving as a UK trade advisor and forwarding non-public information to Jeffrey Epstein has been released recently.

That's currently in the file.

Some of it is involving scheduling.

However, Gordon Brown this morning said that he had actually shared some new information with Scotland Yard in the police.

So none.

It's not exactly just what's in the file, but it could potentially be other material that Gordon Brown and the chancellery were able to investigate as to what Prince Andrew was sharing as part of a broader probe.

Into Lord Mandelson and the tip off that he gave to Jeffrey Epstein about an upcoming bailout.

And I do think that this does reveal quite a lot about Jeffrey Epstein.

The next is the genesis of his rise to power, his wealth and his influence, something that involved, let's say, even some of the co-hosts.

Let's say, on this very podcast, which is a deep financial knowledge of money laundering networks, of trying to be at the very forefront of moving money across the globe, which I believe is his real power and his influence, which is what enabled much of the behavior that much of the public is now horrified by.

OK, I can't let that just go by.

What do you mean by involving co-hosts of this podcast?

Well, I'm talking about Jason.

I actually thought that the Jason email was very interesting.

So you'll see that in 2011 that Jeffrey Epstein is contacting Jason about Bitcoin.

This is by I saw I watched your discussion.

I'm not implicating him in any crime.

I'm saying, if you watch and look at that email very closely, you are watching Jeffrey Epstein, a master money launderer and financial mastermind himself, be at the forefront of the Bitcoin technology and wondering about it in 2011 which, as Jason even pointed out in the last episode that you guys did about this when Bitcoin was some one dollar and some sort of Open source project.

Like to me, that shows how at the forefront he was of new technology and new ways to move money surreptitiously across the globe, which is what I believe was his real strength and his basically his, his raison, useful to all of these different foreign governments and intelligence assets, including ours Russia Israel, various different Israeli or various different intelligence networks across the globe.

Yeah, let me just, for viewers this episode who didn't see that episode, let me just summarize what exactly happened there, because I want to just make sure that Jason's reputation is not unfairly impugned.

And I don't think you're doing that, but just to be absolutely clear about it, what happened was that Jason hosted an episode of This Week in Startups roughly, I think in 2011, with a couple of the Bitcoin core founders.

And then Epstein reached out to him for an introduction to those people.

I thought, and one of my takeaways from that was, like you said Sayegar, that Epstein was extraordinarily early to Bitcoin.

He clearly had a nose in for putting himself in the middle of things.

I think 2011 is when I discovered Bitcoin.

So that was relatively early.

I thought it was almost comical the way that Jason was trying to warn Epstein oh, you don't want to meet these guys.

These are some crazies.

They're like these crypto libertarians.

They want to take down the government.

There's no profit.

There's no investment opportunity here.

In a way, it was kind of comical that Jason was trying to warn Epstein about the Bitcoin guys rather than vice versa, but I don't really think people knew at that point in time what Epstein was involved in.

Do you disagree with that?

Do you think people well Should have known by 2011?

Well David, I mean I will say, there is a way back machine, and we can go back and we can look at what the Google results were.

And we do have somebody who pled guilty.

And look, I mean, this is for every individual to make up their own mind.

You can't Google for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor.

I mean, that was literally a matter of public record.

I can only speak for myself.

That's not really somebody I would involve myself with, even at a professional level.

And, you know, how do you know?

Well, you can Google it.

It's literally public record.

But it wasn't widely publicized at the time.

Well, it was Palm Beach Post.

There were numerous news articles that described it.

I thought the Palm Beach story didn't come out until – or sorry, maybe it was the Miami Herald.

It didn't come out until 2018.

Well, yeah, you're talking about the 2018, kind of the broader story.

But the original solicitation of prostitution involving a minor charge, 2007 I believe is when –

The non-prosecution agreement came to bear.

That was all public record in terms of registration of a sex offender.

And again, you can use the Wayback Machine and you can go back and look.

I mean again, this doesn't necessarily implicate anybody in a crime and anybody can make up the decision for themselves as to how they would have involved themselves with that person.

But it was it was out there like it wasn't unknown.

And I do think it's not really responsible to imply otherwise.

Quick factual clarification on that.

Although it wasn't an enormous story at the time, you can find coverage in the New York Times in July of 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to the two state-level prostitution charges.

We didn't have the full scope of the information obviously, about what he was accused of or the nature of the non-prosecution agreement, but a Google search would have yielded that at that time.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, it's hard for me to judge.

I certainly, in that time period, had never even heard of Jeffrey Epstein.

And I don't think most people had.

When did this become sort of a cause celeb?

I mean, wasn't it more around his 2018?

I would say 2018.

Yeah, I think it's important to explain.

And when the incredibly overrated Miami Herald series by Julie K Brown, which is just rat rife with errors and mischaracterizations, became this sensation across the media landscape.

And Julie K Brown was showered with all these accolades from all these bogus journalism industry organizations, even though, for example, I caught her fabricating quotes in her book Perversion of Justice, which was based on the initial Miami Herald series.

Michael, I don't think that you would most clownish people in the journalism landscape.

I don't think that you would deny that ultimately that this did not.

Yes, it was sparked by Julie K Brown's Miami Herald stories that a federal judge was not necessarily, like you know, a federal judge who reviewed the non-prosecution agreement did say that this was a violation of the Crime Victims Rights Act.

Yeah, that was overturned on appeal.

Right.

Well, I understand.

However, this has also gone forth to the Supreme Court, involving Ghislaine Maxwell, as I understand now is currently being litigated.

But I do think it is important.

The Supreme Court rejected it.

Yeah, that's what I'm what I mean.

Maxwell's. appeal?

I'm talking about the Maxwell appeal, but specifically the non-prosecution agreement and the overturning is what re-led to the current indictment, of the 2019 indictment of Jeffrey Epstein.

That's wrong, Sagar.

No, well, go ahead.

I'm happy for you to explain it to me.

Go ahead.

I mean, this is a misconception.

The non-prosecution agreement was never overturned.

Ghislaine Maxwell's argument includes, let me just finish.

Sure.

Ghislaine Maxwell's argument in her appeals included citing the non-prosecution agreement as something that she claimed she ought to have been covered by and therefore insulated from, federal prosecution which was initiated against her in 2020.

The non-prosecution agreement was never nullified.

It was never voided.

Bradley Edwards, the victim lawyer, attempted to convince federal judges to somehow nullify it, but he failed.

The reason why Jeffrey Epstein was federally re-prosecuted in 2019 is because prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Maureen Comey et al They, concocted this cockamamie rationale for how they could circumvent the non-prosecution agreement by picking, claiming they found a new victim in New York, claiming that there was some interstate nexus in which they could tie some of the old Florida allegations, but it was never nullified at all.

So just to be clear about that.

I apologize for not being very specific in my language.

It was ruled in 2019 that it had violated the Crime Victims Rights Act.

That's what led to the re-indictment.

But what I'm specific, Well, no, there was no connection.

Well, no, because that led to the story reopening from Miami Herald.

And that led then to the 2019 SDNY prosecution.

I'm sorry, not to be combative, but you have your chronology wrong.

Well, the Miami Herald story was based on Julie K. Brown.

Right.

Yeah.

That was based on Julie K Brown colluding with the victim's lawyers, not the court ruling on the Crime Victims Rights Act.

All right guys, let me just get control of this again, because I think we're going down a rabbit hole and there's lots of aspects of the story that we could discuss.

I think that we should probably judge each person who interacted with Epstein or visited his island, and so forth and so on individually, in terms of what they actually did, what they actually knew.

Sagar, I just think you're being a little bit unfair to Jason, because all he did was exchange emails with Epstein in the 2011 time period.

That's all.

Well, what I was trying to point out was Jeffrey Epstein's knowledge or interest of Bitcoin in 2011.

And that links to a broader Epstein involvement with money laundering and tax fraud and so-called involvement with Leon Black and many of these other multibillionaires who paid him lots of money.

I'm just saying I'm putting that as part of a piece into a broader scheme.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I think that exchange was noteworthy for the reason you just said, which is that Epstein somehow was putting himself in the middle of all sorts of things.

I mean, he's almost like a zealot-like figure who pops up in many different newsworthy stories over the last few decades, which is what I think makes this interesting.

I think maybe a question for each of you is, who do you think this guy ultimately was?

I mean, you hear all sorts of theories.

Let's say, maybe the epstein maximalist position would be that he was an intelligence asset or intelligence agent who was running a vast compromise operation on his island and thereby was corrupting and blackmailing the world's elite to someone who uh, i think, michael you, you have a different point of view on that.

Let me not characterize it.

I'll let you guys do it.

But Sagar, let me start with you.

Who do you think this guy was?

And ultimately, you know, at a 30,000 foot level, what do you think is going on here?

What is this Epstein story really about?

And then, Michael, I want to go to you on the same question. in the way that I describe it.

I think that Jeffrey Epstein was somebody who arose under very suspicious conditions in the 1980s, potentially involving Iran-Contra knowledge, specifically with arms traffickers like Adnan Khashoggi and Douglas Lease Stephen Hoffenberg as well and that these black market money laundering, tax evasion strategies were honed over a period which eventually ensnared various people like Leslie Wexner and many other multibillionaires, and that, at the very same time, he also had, you know, his sexual proclivities, which I think at this point were well known, and that those became and became useful.

His money laundering, specific duties and knowledge and usefulness, let's say to the CIA, to various other intelligence assets, became a very useful part of the nexus in the post-cold war environment and that at the time it was also socially known for a lot of epstein associates that he had this bizarre practice of often, you know, seeking out massages which in some cases they are saying, involving underage girls.

And so To say that he was running a vast compromise operation I think ascribes too much intention to what's really happening here.

And the reason why I'm being intentional in my language is that what he clearly was doing was recruiting and running this like vast massage scheme, also involving Ghislaine Maxwell and all across the world Russian and Eastern European women involved, but also that this behavior was tolerated, in some cases seen by a vast number of the global elite.

Now the 2007 circumstances of the non-prosecution agreement.

You know, Michael and I could go back on this forward a long time as to the circumstances of which that arose.

However, I don't think Michael, you would even deny that his access to wealth, power and money did eventually allow him to get off with the 2007 non-prosecution agreement and the eventual sweetheart deal that he gets with his hiring.

I wouldn't agree with that, actually.

Well, I mean, I don't think the average Joe can just hire Ken Starr and private investigators and lawyers to tell some of the victims.

His vast wealth enabled him to secure very high-powered legal representation.

That's what I'm claiming.

But this whole concept of a sweetheart deal is a total canard.

That was popularized by Julian K Brown.

Michael, I don't want to get off on that yet, but just go back to my original question of what is your 30000-foot take on what this story is about?

Who was this guy in your view?

I will answer that.

However, I do want to just stipulate up front that I think this reflex to have to offer some kind of totalistic assessment of who Jeffrey Epstein was at his very essence has fed into so much of the constant churn of algorithmic slop that has generated this hysterical frenzy around this issue and has led to people being totally deluded by what we're even talking about.

What do most people... I have some surmises about Jeffrey Epstein.

He definitely was a money manager who, as you mentioned, was sort of like this zealot character who did have an extraordinary cross-section of connections with people from across fields and

I just was looking through some of these records in the new Epstein Files productions and I was looking for something else, but there are Mm-hmm.

Because he is believed to have been the most prolific child sex trafficker in American, or perhaps world history, which is why this issue might now take down the British government.

It's embroiling Norway.

A minister in Slovakia had to resign over it.

There's a new criminal investigation that was just launched in France, etc.

That's what people conceive Jeffrey Epstein to have been.

And that whole notion is based on just an onslaught of mythological nonsense that's pumped out daily by these YouTube shows I won't mention names podcasts, et cetera, social media personalities who are driven by these perverse algorithmic incentives to be totally divorced from the facts.

Foreground this rampant speculation that ties in the Mossad, ties in unnamed other intelligence agencies, with this presumed implication or this presumed reality that, of course, we know for sure that Jeffrey Epstein was running this pedo crime ring.

And they presuppose a conclusion that's just been floating out there in the ether thanks to all this horrendous media coverage.

I think this is the worst story of my adult lifetime in terms of the media coverage, and it implicates the alternative media, the mainstream media and everybody in between.

It's actually shocking.

I will predict here and now that if we revisit this issue in I don't know two or three years, people will come to realize if I have anything to do with it that they were bamboozled on a mass scale.

There's genuine fraud that has been rampant in terms of the journalistic malfeasance.

We're not supposed to ever consider the massive financial incentives where the Epstein industry is now.

Something like I've estimated a billion dollars in terms of the payouts that have been given to purported victims who are allowed to just reimagine things that happened to them 20 years before as an adult not as a child, but adult at the time of their claim victimization and then call themselves a sex trafficking victim.

And then they can secure a couple million dollars tax-free from JP Morgan, and the media will hail them as these brave survivors without doing a single thing to check the veracity of any of their claims.

You know why people are so upset about these redactions in the Epstein Files?

And I'm upset too.

I criticized Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna for the language of their bill that they crafted the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which they crafted in concert with Bradley Edwards.

This extortionist quote unquote victim's lawyer, who's made a killing on this issue over the past 10 years in conjunction with David Boies another shyster.

And Bradley Edwards, his urging, Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey put in this giant carve out to so-called transparency and disclosure into their bill, such that the DOJ was authorized to redact or withhold or conceal any information that could be the most tangentially tied to anything.

That's quote victim identifying.

So they've been arguing frantically in federal court for the past few months that they're opposed to the disclosure of Epstein files.

Because it's going to terrorize all these beleaguered women.

I don't know.

Do you think that maybe if we did get full transparency, it might disrupt this sanitized quote survivor narrative that everybody pushes so credulously?

I'll just give you one example, and I don't want to go on for too long.

And there's so many threads that I could pull here that you have to kind of rein me in.

But One narrative that could disrupt if we actually did get genuine disclosure, which we're not.

And in fact Edwards at all, demanded that the entire archive be taken down because this disclosure was just too horrendously threatening to them.

We would maybe get more insight into some of the government propaganda that's been allowed to promulgate unchecked.

And Sagar, I wonder if you've corrected this on breaking points.

You can let me know.

But for months-

People, politicians across the media, the political spectrum as well as the media writ large, have unthinkingly regurgitated this figure that there were over a thousand victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

Sometimes that gets upgraded to thousands of victims.

That's what Pramila Jayapal said at the Bondi hearing last week.

Ro Khanna constantly blurts out this whole this claim of over a thousand survivors.

And this is based on the July 6 2025 FBI DOJ memo which claimed that after a review of the evidence after the second Trump administration came in, they found that over 1000 victims were quote harmed by Epstein.

So they used this very conspicuous weasel wordage.

And it was very dubious to me the instant I read it.

Turns out.

Thank God on some level for the Epstein files, because there is a major revelation contained therein, which is that this number is a fraud.

It's bogus.

They admit in FBI memoranda that this number is based on a total of purported victims, the majority of whom would have been adults at the time of their claim.

Victimization anyway.

But that includes the family members of alleged victims in that total number that's been-.

Well Michael, how many alleged victims are there?

Well, who knows?

Why is the government deceiving the public about it?

If people want to be mad at Cash Patel and Pam Bondi for putting out that phony propagandistic figure and then have it be repeated ad nauseum without the slightest bit of critical discernment.

Well, I do, Michael.

I think we can at least agree that Cash Patel and Pam Bondi haven't handled this all that responsibly.

What happened on that particular issue?

Oh, well, I mean, you're asking me to correct the record of something I've never even uttered.

I've never said the word.

Literally not something that I've ever claimed.

I mean, I do think, Michael, that what you like to do is to go after.

And really, I think fundamentally, I'm not even sure if you would reject this.

You reject the idea of victimization, that post victimization can even happen.

And I also I don't even necessarily want to reject the idea of victimization.

I don't even know what that means.

Well, You reject the idea that an adult woman could be victimized, let's say by Jeffrey Epstein, manipulated.

Yes, and even in some cases, money works changing hands.

I will say, by the way, that just paying or flying in adult women from Eastern Europe for the express purposes of having sex is a crime.

By the way,

Sure, it's not underage.

However, we do have the 2007 draft indictment, where there were a number of underage victims that were mentioned there, where Epstein specifically asked a 15 year old if he knows anybody who's younger that he could be able to recruit it.

And so I do think your core contention that at the end of the day, he wasn't a quote pedophile is definitely illegitimate.

But I also don't necessarily want to get dragged into the victim stuff which I think that you are fundamentally focused on, because I do think when you're saying, why are people talking about this?

It confirms that a general suspicion of the way that people act with impunity at the highest levels of American or global society, in terms of their moral character, in terms of their dealings, let's say financially.

And you like to brush across this intelligence question.

Actually, I would love for you to be able to just grapple with some of the facts necessarily just related today, where the Israeli government was installing surveillance equipment in an Epstein-owned apartment just by using For the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak.

Where we have Ehud Barak and Epstein joking questioningly about Mossad.

Where Epstein is foiling.

1999 the CIA for any mention of himself, for the very dealings that he himself had with the arms dealing industry in the 1980s, for the fact that he had a false Austrian passport at the age of 29 years old, Austria being the capital of spies long before he ever became, you know, very filthy rich.

And so michael, i think what you're obfuscating is a general interest in the story and often that what you try to do is find the lowest iq, most maximalist people talking about cannibals or anything like that, and paint that.

That's not what i do at all.

No, but it is, michael.

Even i barely mentioned the cannibalism stuff.

I mean of Yeah, you paint the rest of us who believe, let's say, in some of a bigger part of this story, as I mean, if you believe, if you believe that we can just accept at face value that a 21 year old model who accepted an invitation to visit Jeffrey's Island,

When she was in the British Virgin Islands.

Potentially under false pretenses.

Oh, let me finish.

Let me finish.

Potentially under false pretenses by Jean-Luc Brunel.

And you don't bother even looking into it.

No, I had nothing to say.

What do you mean I don't bother looking into it?

This is nonsense.

I mean, I'm talking.

Tell me if you've looked into what I'm about to describe.

Can I have 30 seconds to describe it?

All right, go ahead.

Lisa Phillips, who was one of the women quote survivors who spoke at these press conferences in front of the US Capitol and infamously declared that she and her fellow survivors were going to create their own list of Epstein clients and then hand it over to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey so they could read it out on the floor of the House of Representatives under the protections of the speech and debate clause and caused a giant media firestorm, as I don't have to remind you.

Her whole tale of victimization is that at age 21, as a professional model, she was on a photo shoot in the British Virgin Islands.

Another girl or young woman that she was with invited her to take a ferry to Jeffrey Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands.

She accepted.

She never claimed victimization for like 17 or 20 years.

She's on a podcast in 2020 saying, gee whiz.

I never heard anything about all this crazy Epstein stuff, but I knew him and I don't know what happened there.

Then all of a sudden, JP Morgan opens its floodgates for settlements. of $290 million.

I know we're not supposed to acknowledge human nature about what that can incentivize.

On this particular subject,

I mean, explain that to me.

And she now claims that we're supposed to just take her to be a survivor.

She was one of the women who also stood up and protested Pam Bondi last week.

So yeah Sagar, if you do take at face value that that person can be rightly designated as a victim and fuel and foment this giant worldwide pedophilia crisis that we're supposedly in the midst of, then I don't know.

I mean, I consider you to have a pretty high IQ and that's just not some like rando on social media talking about cannibals.

So you tell me if you agree that that's a legitimate case of victimization and it should be-.

Michael, I think you've just done the classic example of selecting some-.

Look, I'm not here to defend every so-called Epstein victim because, by the way, I think that what you do very expertly is finding people like Lisa Phillips and then trying to portray all of them of that sort.

Like.

Would you deny that vast wire transfers were sent to Eastern Europe to fly in women for the express purposes of sex?

Because that is adult women.

OK.

Is that not a crime, Michael?

Have you Googled the Mann Act?

I mean, for somebody who has actually looked into prostitution?

I mean, this is what I'm talking about.

Is that, by the way also, you have not yet grappled with the 2007 draft indictment.

I'm happy to get into it.

OK, I mean, look, I have, unfortunately, a very limited amount of time.

I have four requests outstanding for that.

Hold on, guys.

So Sager told us up front that he only had half an hour.

So, you know, we don't have that much time.

Listen, Sagar, let me ask you a couple other questions.

And then once Sagar leaves, Michael, we can get you to say what you want to say.

I want to go to the Les Wexner deposition the other day.

What did we learn from that specifically about how Epstein got his start?

I do think that there are these questions about, again, who this guy was.

How did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars so early in his career?

How did he seem to obtain all these different connections specifically to the intelligence world?

Did any of that get resolved?

And what's your take on that?

No, David, it wasn't resolved.

Unfortunately, the entire transcript is not public.

What we do know from the House Oversight Committee, at least what's been released now so far, is Leslie Wexner said he was never questioned ever once by the FBI or the Department of Justice involving this case.

I will say, if you look at the track record of Leslie Wexner, it's incredibly bizarre.

He claims that Jeffrey was a con man. who stole his money for decades.

In 1991, we have the power of attorney that was signed over to him.

He claims that Epstein was a financial genius and a wizard.

We have the transferring of the townhome which eventually there was some payment that was reconciled on the back end.

But an incredible amount of control that Jeffrey Epstein had over Leslie Wexner's finances, over the Wexner Foundation, which he used to funnel money to Ayyub Barak.

The former prime minister of Israel support many Zionist causes under the Wexner Foundation, including the Wexner Fellowship, currently at Harvard University.

I do think it's important for us to explore some more of that.

There's some very odd dealings with the beginnings of their relationship.

Previous Epstein associates have testified that in 1992, which is shortly after power of attorney and all of that was acquired, or the relationship sorry between Epstein and Wexner began, is that much of Epstein's lifestyle exploded.

Wexner does not even dispute that Epstein had vast control over his finances and even claims that he was stolen from by Jeffrey Epstein, that their relationship is supposed to have ended sometime, I think in 2007.

But he has not yet answered questions about this relationship in an open public forum beyond some, And he currently did issue an opening statement for the record.

I personally would like to see the release of that transcript.

I mean, all for transparency here in this particular case, he's an 88 year old man.

And I do think it's genuinely bizarre.

Oh, and not to even mention the modeling industry which you know, which Wexner himself was involved in.

And there's several emails, including Wexner's own crude drawing in the Epstein birthday book involving boobs that he said that's all Epstein ever wanted.

So their relationship is bizarre.

It goes back decades.

Wexner maintains, as I said, that he was conned and that he was stolen from.

I don't really believe much of that story.

Michael, you and I have now read thousands of Epstein emails.

There's no sophisticated financial instruments.

Going on even back to the very beginnings of Jeffrey Epstein's claims here about managing money.

Almost none of it passes the smelter.

David, you're a very high net worth individual.

You can go to Goldman Sachs or many other financial houses and get teams of people to manage money for sophisticated financial instruments and others not available to the rest of us.

It'd be very odd for you to turn over your finances to Jeffrey Epstein.

Yeah.

So he began his career, I guess, at Bear Stearns.

I guess there's a brief stint where he worked.

I guess he one of the curious things about him is he dropped out of college around age 20.

I guess he was studying math.

He then was a teacher at the Dalton School for like a year.

Correct.

And then he worked at Bear Stearns for four years.

He met Ace Greenberg through the Dalton School.

Greenberg's I think it was one of his children was there.

And then he went to Bear Stearns.

He's fired from Bear Stearns after a couple of years.

And that's when his descent into what I call like the darkness, his expertise in money laundering.

I believe that that's when it was honed, as reflects in the record and the testimony of the people who dealt with him there at the time, including the false passport, Iran-Contra arms smuggling and all of that that I've laid out.

So can I ask you a quick question?

I know you have to go soon.

I'm honestly curious if you would agree with the statement from Thomas Massey.

This is from February 16th.

He says, quote We're exposing the extent of Epstein's global pedophile ring and how it touches our government and aristocracy.

So do you think it's a factually valid statement that what we know to have taken place, and maybe even is still ongoing, is a quote global pedophile ring.

Well, I mean, when what you're asking about a global pedophile ring is there.

Well Sorry, this is Thomas Massey saying.

Thomas Massey, a global pedophile ring is a ring of global elites who seemed aware and perhaps participated in the abuse of underage children.

Now, Michael, I will grant you this.

And what I respect.

So you do agree with the statement?

Well, no, I will grant you this.

What I think you do well is to parse the actual individual claim of many of the victims and others that are out there.

And I actually think you have a great role in this ecosystem for debunking especially some of the lowest IQ content which is out there, like you did with the torture video.

So I do want to appreciate you for doing that.

That was low-hanging fruit.

I mean, I don't really appreciate this idea that I only focus on low IQ social media blather.

Okay, Mike.

I've delved very deeply into the legal minutia of all this, Sagar.

Yes, I know you have.

Jeffrey Epstein is just casually called a pedophile virtually everywhere in the media, among every politician, nonstop.

And Michael, much of your criticism – Right, but your criticism Michael, is that actually he was an abelophile because he would like to – post-pubescent 15-year-old girls.

Don't you find it bizarre that, for all the enormous media resources that have been poured into this story over the past, however many years, by people Newspapers magazines podcasts, Netflix specials, you name it

I guess I'm the only one who ever thought to actually go into the Florida court docket and pull up the transcript of the plea hearing in June of 2008 when he entered his guilty plea in Florida for two state-level prostitution charges.

And he's called a convicted pedophile.

It turns out the sole minor victim who was cited in that plea hearing, as the sole minor to whom he procured for prostitution, was literally 17 years old.

Yes Michael, I understand that, because they picked the oldest person in the indictment to plead guilty to.

And there's a 14, 15 year old, which is named in the 2007 draft.

Michael, you're focusing.

I am focusing on a federal document.

There's a federal document which specifically alleges a 14 and 15 year old who are abused, including asking a 15 year old.

If there is this 2007 draft, you are going to take his dispositive.

Well, I'm not going to.

OK, unfortunately it was never.

It was never contested because of the plea agreement which eventually came forward.

I mean, I think you're using the same tactic Alan Dershowitz did in his defense.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to do with Dershowitz or I don't share his tactical.

I unfortunately have to take my child to a doctor's appointment.

That's more important, as I flagged to all of you uh and uh in the beginning of this entire thing, and i do want to say operating a good faith as well saga, for the most part, unlike a lot of people who have glommed on to this story and you're willing to, you know, engage on the substance.

So that again is appreciated by me and you know, whenever you'd like to engage further, i'm always available.

All right, michael?

Uh, thank you david, for the invitation.

Yes, thank you for coming saga, appreciate it.

All right.

So michael, let me kind of reset here.

I'm not sure you've had a chance to kind of lay out your case for what you called Epstein mythology.

Yeah.

So I want to give you a chance to kind of just lay out your thesis here that what's happening is actually a type of moral panic or feeding frenzy, a type of hysteria.

You've compared it to the Salem witch trials.

Yeah.

There was also the case of the 1980s, of the whole daycare child abuse case satanic panic, that's what it's called where i think hundreds of people went to jail or were prosecuted for that.

It turned out if it was hundreds but more than enough to make it a extreme miscarriage of justice.

So that's the comparison you've made.

So i guess i want to let you lay out that case in a clear way, because i'm not sure that you've had a chance to quite do that yet.

I mean, i've definitely laid out my case on this score in many other venues and on many other occasions, but i guess not on this particular podcast yet.

So i'm happy to sketch it out in terms of the satanic panic parallel.

That's not one that i would have necessarily been most inclined to bring up until recently, just because there's now this new layer of the mythology that's added been added with the production of these epstein quote files where people are reading snippets of emails to signify some kind of coded messaging around cannibalism or around grotesque child sacrifice.

That really wasn't a hallmark of the epstein story so much before this enormous tranche of emails were released, and it relates to the satanic panic frenzy insofar as claims around such things as like truly grotesque child sacrifice, mutilation of infants, you know, bathing toddlers in blood, like all the most nightmarish scenarios you could possibly dream up, were alleged in the 1980s and taken deadly seriously by the authorities, resulting in, as you alluded to, a good number of people actually being thrown in prison for many years.

And it was found to be just a gigantic hoax.

But maybe a more apt parallel that also would have been apt even before this latest record production is that the satanic panic frenzy of the 1980s was ultimately concluded to have originated really with one woman who was just straightforwardly mentally ill delusional, needed to essentially be institutionalized, and yet she would make claims about child sex abuse that the authorities countenanced or gave credence to.

And there's a similar thing going on with the Epstein mythology.

Now, when I mention the Epstein mythology, I'm not talking about the 2007 2008 Florida non-prosecution agreement or that whole scenario that Sager brought up in piecemeal before.

That's a different element of this whole story.

The mythology developed later, mostly around 2014, with the introduction of these new claims by Virginia Roberts Gufray and her lawyers, Bradley Edwards, Paul Cassell, later David Boies, in which she alleged that she had been child sex trafficked around the world and that she knew that Epstein enforced this child sex trafficking operation via blackmail.

And also she made specific allegations against three children, particular individuals Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, John Luke Brunel.

And then also she accused a generic category of other high profile persons who she didn't specify as also victimizing her, like prime ministers and politicians and presidents and so forth.

So that's basically the origin of what I would call the mythology, which is just sort of a different order or magnitude than the initial Palm Beach prosecution, which was effectively a local crime.

But in terms of the parallel to the satanic panic.

Virginia Roberts Kufre was a profoundly disturbed, mentally unwell person who was validated and legitimized and now continues to be celebrated as some kind of martyr for truth, even though if anybody had used a lick of discernment as to her claims, it would have been found that she could not be treated so credulously.

Maybe she needed some help, but this idea that she would be the basis for this global scandal that's rocking all these countries, it's just outrageous.

And there are two others who are fundamentally, two other mentally ill women.

And I don't say that even to be pejorative or derogatory at all.

It's just objectively true if you take a look.

Maria Farmer is one of these other definitely mentally ill persons who, for example, introduced or was integral in introducing this idea that Epstein had cameras set up in all his bedrooms and bathrooms and was surreptitiously recording prominent people so he could use it for blackmail.

And then another one.

Sarah Ransom was one of the people who spurred the mythology in large part around the island.

So she came to claim, after going through several mental health crises, that she had been systematically raped at the island, even though when she actually had to eventually give deposition, she really described nothing of the sort.

She was also an adult when she went to the island voluntarily and she described what was effectively a consensual, minor sexual encounter with Epstein.

But she dramatized it radically in the wake and people don't know i mean david, do you?

Did you know this or does anybody know that they're in the public, know that despite everybody, and their mother including, like rocon and thomas massey at all declaring that the epstein property in the us virgin islands, the private island, that it's rape island or pedophile island, that there's never been a credible allegation of rape ever discovered, that that took place on that island like, is that well known or am i crazy?

No, it's not well-known.

The only reason I knew is because I've heard you on a couple of podcasts, so I thought it was important to get you on as a counterpoint.

So just with respect to these three women, they did go to the island.

Is that true?

Sarah Ransom did.

Okay.

Maria Farmer, no.

Maria Farmer is the one who purported that she was actually the original Epstein accuser, and she was this great hero whistleblower because—

She tried to sound the alarm way before all these other females were abused.

She claims that in 1996, after she had been a 25-year-old employee of Epstein's, who basically sat at his front desk in his New York townhouse, that she was invited and accepted to go to the Ohio compound of Lexley Wexner to be an artist in residence of sorts, because she was a painter.

And then she claimed that over the course of her interactions with Epstein and Maxwell she ended up filing a first attempted police report and then went to the FBI.

And she never really specified what it is that she claimed that she reported to the FBI with any clarity whatsoever.

But she told this tale about how Epstein had supposedly stolen these photographs that she had produced of her younger sisters who were below the age of 18, so that she could use those photographs to paint paintings of her younger sisters in the nude.

Now, I don't know.

I mean, I guess that's a confession to production of child pornography, but technically speaking.

But you know.

But that's what she claimed.

And then she also added that she had been sexually assaulted or abused or raped by both Epstein and Maxwell.

And somehow, over the course of that assault, at age 26 she had like a divine revelation literally, and realized that they were both pedophiles.

This is how she recounted it years after the fact.

And if you look at the police, that FBI intake report or the complaint that was memorialized, that has come out in terms of what was contemporaneously reported.

She mentioned nothing about a sexual assault.

She mentions nothing about any kind of sex crime at all.

She simply claims that these photos of hers were stolen and there's never been any evidence that those photos were actually stolen.

So that's one person, and she's come – and these three women, Ransom, Farmer –

Goof Roberts, Goof Ray were all integral in different dimensions of the mythology.

They were incredibly important name plaintiffs and critical litigation.

They, you know, criminal investigations were launched based on the basis of their claims in various respects.

And they're all just profoundly mentally ill, erratic and wholly unreliable to the degree that if we're going to have a international process, mass hysteria, narrative that's at all predicated on their claims, then we've entered into a fantasy land, because it will never in the future hold up to any kind of rational re-evaluation or scrutiny at all.

Okay so, robert scufre, or vrg as yeah, as i think you've called her in your sub stack.

Yeah, when did she come forward with her?

Yeah, her story, because i, she was the basis of that netflix movie or documentary called filthy rich about, about Epstein.

You were saying that that happened after the whole 2008 Palm beach.

Yeah.

I'll, I'll explain.

And, by the way, filthy rich which uh, over this past summer, when the Epstein Fuhrer kind of got reignited, it like skyrocketed to like the one of the, you know, the top of the charts on Netflix once again.

So uh, That little piece of commercial propaganda has been very determinative in terms of how people have had their perception shaped of this issue.

And it is like literal propaganda, I would argue, in the sense that it was concocted as a PR vehicle for the quote-unquote victims and especially their lawyers, to create a public clamor for some kind of remedial action to be taken against um Epstein's co-conspirators or, more more, more relevantly, his estate.

It was, it was a maneuver.

It was a PR maneuver by a legal team who worked alongside the producers of that documentary, as it has, as has had been so much of the mass market entertainment products that have been produced around the Epstein affair.

It's only taken from that one perspective of the purported victims.

And that perspective is shaped very carefully by their lawyers to create this sanitized survivor narrative that is now the predominant one.

But in terms of her origins yes, she.

She initially filed some civil litigation around I want to say 2009 2010, maybe 08 as a Jane Doe, maybe 2011, somewhere in that range.

First, as a Jane Doe, meaning she wasn't named in the litigation.

And this related to a period of around 2001 2002 when she was in the epstein orbit to some extent and there's there's evidence that she was in the epstein orbit to some extent she's not hallucinating everything i've argued that i would she's not so much a liar i wouldn't say like i've never directly accused her of lying about anything as such i've called i've said that she's kind of confabulated an alternate reality and that's a little bit different because it doesn't necessarily connote willful deceits and it's almost even more disturbing if you think about it.

What's your basis for that?

The big one, I guess, is that, in your view, that she recanted her story about Dershowitz?

Yeah, she recanted her story, not just about Dershowitz.

That's maybe the most well-known instance of her recanting one of her marquee. claims.

And it really only came about because Dershowitz was unusually motivated to actually pursue some sort of resolution through a very protracted litigation process against very high-powered lawyers.

I mean, one of the fallacies here is that these survivors quote unquote such as Virginia, are taken to be these beleaguered victims, et cetera, who had no power at all in this dynamic.

And yet, I mean, they were represented by some of the most powerful and skillful lawyers in the country, such as David Boies, who's like one of the best known lawyers of all time and was hugely well resourced.

And also, you know, Virginia Goufray became incredibly wealthy maybe not as wealthy as you David, but you know 20 estimates range from like 15 20, 25 million dollars.

It's hard to know because a lot of the settlement details are secret.

So it wasn't just this hapless victim who had no leg to stand on in order to make her claims.

But yeah, Dershowitz, she ended up recanting her allegations.

And bear in mind it wasn't just that she happened to level some accusation at some point, maybe in casual banter.

It's that she made allegations of herself having been victimized by Dershowitz sexually on at least six or seven occasions.

And she described each individual instance of that victimization in vivid graphic, almost grotesque detail describing Dershowitz's body parts, sexual proclivities etc.

And she did this in sworn affidavits and under deposition.

So could theoretically even be subject to perjury charges, should a prosecutor ever have been inclined to bring them, which of course they wouldn't have been in this environment.

But it goes much further.

She had to recant claims against Harvard professor Stephen Koslin, who she claimed she had intercourse with.

She recanted even claims against Jean-Luc Brunel, who's another sort of actor or a player in this whole story that leads people to make their postulations about there being this supposedly international sex trafficking ring, because he was like a modeling mogul.

But he ends up getting arrested by French authorities under pressure from the US in 2019, after Epstein himself was federally indicted and arrested.

And given the vagaries of the French legal system, which I don't fully comprehend, still in relation to the United States.

He was in custody or incarcerated for quite a long time prior to any formal charges being brought.

Eventually, she's called to provide evidence against Virginia is called from Australia to go to Paris to provide evidence against Jean-Luc Brunel in 2021.

In this format, that is nothing that takes place in the US, but it's like where both the defense and the prosecution have an ability to question or have colloquies with the accuser.

And she ends up having to retract her claims against him as well.

And her lawyers had to admit that this memoir that she produced, or memoir manuscript that she produced in 2011 and 2012, that she was sort of scheming with this ghostwriter who was potentially going to work with her, Sharon Churcher, a journalist at the Daily Mail.

She was scheming about how they could get the biggest possible book deal or even like a movie deal or some kind of entertainment package deal.

And she already had been paid 160000 plus by the Daily Mail, plus serialization revenue, for having done an interview with them and given over the Prince Andrew photo.

And then they wanted to marshal or leverage that momentum publicity-wise, from the Daily Mail articles in 2011 into a book.

And so Sharon Churcher in this email exchange, you can go read it.

It came out in litigation, says, hey, yeah, you know what?

Just throw anybody's name in, you can think of who might have had the most fleeting association with Jeffrey Epstein.

And that'll get us the biggest possible book deal.

That'll entice the most publishers and agents around.

And as to Dershowitz, yeah, I mean, he's pretty well known and we all think he's a pedo.

So throw him in there, too.

I mean, that's what they're saying.

And this is your interpretation of what happened.

Almost literally what they say.

I'm not exactly quoting.

Who said that?

This is what Churcher says to Virginia Roberts-Gouffray, and she's all on board with it.

How do we know that?

Because we have the transcripts of the emails.

Wow.

OK.

And they came out of the course of discovery in litigation.

And this person was.

She was a trash journalist.

Who was a journalist who authored the book with her, or what was?

They were in talks for her to potentially be the co-author of the book.

So they were.

They were sort of strategizing as to how they could get a book deal or get a literary agent to sign on with Virginia and get her a lucrative book deal.

And then what ended up happening?

A draft manuscript was produced.

I don't know exactly how involved Church was.

Was there a book published?

Not initially.

Finally, a version did eventually come out last October after Virginia Roberts could phrase purported death in April of last year.

And I only say purported because the circumstances of it are still bizarre.

Look, I mean I'm willing to grant that she is infected at this point.

But I mean that's another sort of tangent.

But no, it didn't come out for a long time.

A draft was produced and then the draft manuscript had to be revealed or handed over over the course of litigation with Dershowitz.

And her lawyers by 2017 to 2019, had to admit on her behalf.

So, David Boies et al, that this memoir manuscript, which had been presented as nonfiction, which was shopped around to potential book publishers as nonfiction, which had been the basis for a lot of media coverage around these allegations as though it were a nonfictional representation of her purported experiences, they finally have to admit that it was a fictionalized account of her purported experiences.

This is VRG's own lawyers, like David Boies.

So they basically said that this manuscript, which had been the basis for her story and – A lot of the mythology.

Like Bill Clinton was on the island.

She claimed no evidence that Bill Clinton was ever on the island.

He did fly around in Epstein's private jet in 2002 and 2003, but no evidence he ever went to the island.

So Bill Clinton was never on the island.

She claimed that she saw him on the island, which is false as far as we know, or as far as all the available evidence has ever suggested.

That probably is one of the most repeated – claims in respect to Epstein, which is that Bill Clinton was on the island.

And you're saying that's just completely untrue.

And that came from VRG's manuscript, which ultimately they had to admit was a work of fiction, not nonfiction.

At least her own lawyers did.

Correct.

But what's so mind boggling is that just relatively recently, after this whole blow up around Epstein got ignited last July, the book publishers obviously realized that it was a highly profitable opportunity for them to produce some version of her manuscript in the form of a new memoir.

Now, she had been working on a new version of it with another ghostwriter for some time, Amy Wallace, but they obviously wanting to peg the publication of it to this renewed Epstein uproar.

So the memoir finally gets published in some capacity in October of last year.

It becomes an international bestseller, not just in the United States, but in Britain Australia, et cetera.

And I'm still stunned.

I mean, maybe I can no longer really be stunned anymore, but it's still stunning to think back on how credulously The reception to that memoir was, even though, I mean, it was basically just Amy Wallace, this ghostwriter, repackaging and massaging.

Oh, I always catch myself when I use the verb massage now.

I shouldn't use that.

Repackaging the initial memoir manuscript and basically updating it for 2025.

And nowhere do they disclose that it's based on a fictionalized manuscript.

So it's just a fraud.

Wait, so they ultimately did publish a version of the manuscript?

Yes, last year.

And did that book include the accusations against Dershowitz and Bill Clinton?

Or had that been removed by that point?

To clarify, those allegations of sexual improprieties against Dershowitz were not in the 2011 manuscript.

Those were concocted later as a basis for Virginia Roberts Gufray to join this ongoing litigation that her lawyer, Bradley Edwards, had initiated around something called the Crime Victims Rights Act and how the non-prosecution agreement from 2007-2008 had supposedly violated the Crime Victims Rights Act.

It's a complicated issue, but that was debuted.

Those claims against Dershowitz were debuted in December of 2014.

But there are a bunch of other claims already in the manuscript from 2011 and there's a reference to Dershowitz, but it's just not an accusation of sexual violence.

OK, the three women that you mentioned Gufray Ransom Farmer, did they have the same lawyers or different lawyers?

Were lawyers working together?

Pretty much the same lawyers.

I mean, it's basically the same cabal of lawyers.

It's David.

So is it your argument?

Bradley Edwards firm.

Bradley Edwards was the initial lawyer that that oversaw primarily the Florida case.

The purported victims from the Palm Beach phase from 2002 to 2005.

He started representing them around 2008.

And then boys came a little bit later around the more kind of grandiose litigation.

But they've worked in conjunction with one another and still are.

They're still suing in a class action lawsuit that they initiated last October, Bank of America to extract a couple hundred more million dollars, just like they did from JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank and the Epstein estate, and plenty of individualized lawsuits that they've alluded to but never clarified the parameters of, like they brag.

Bradley Edwards does that they got like 20 or 25 settlements that are still secret, he says, from specific individuals whom he acknowledges may not have committed any wrongdoing at all but just simply don't want to suffer the PR backlash of that we're seeing now on steroids.

So it's a hugely lucrative industry.

And I don't know, you tell me, David, is this like dimension of this whole story ever mentioned anywhere in any of the popular media coverage, whether it's on podcasts or on CNN or anywhere?

No.

Okay.

And even the Deutsche Bank settlement, I don't think I'd have heard of that.

What was that?

So when Epstein dies, August 10th, 2019, right?

The a feeding frenzy breaks out in terms of litigation that is brought against his estate, because at that point epstein is obviously no longer available to contest any claims that are made against him and libel laws cease to apply.

People are aware obviously, that he was very wealthy.

He wasn't like a multi-multi-billionaire as a lot of people suspected at the time, but according to his um disclosure of assets when he was arrested, his net worth was like six, uh 650 million, So still a pretty big estate.

And so, because of this flood of lawsuits against the estate, the executors of the estate, Darren Indyk and Richard Kahn, decide to agree to coordinate with the victim's lawyers Bradley Edwards, David Boyes et al to set up basically, a mediation program that they call the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund, which is a holistic settlement process that victims, or alleged victims, could submit claims to.

And then there would be a mediator brought in to evaluate the claims and decide what amount of money to give out.

So there wouldn't have to just be like a flood of individual lawsuits.

They could kind of consolidate it.

And so they set up a settlement model, basically for the Epstein estate, which was expressly non-adversarial, meaning there'd be no adversarial scrutinization of the claims that were made to justify somebody's entitlement to millions of dollars.

Claimants were entitled to as much as $5 million from just this one settlement fund.

And it was tax-free, by the way.

Wait, this is with Deutsche Bank?

No, no, this is the Epstein Estate.

I'm getting to Deutsche Bank because it ties into the Epstein Estate.

From the Epstein Estate.

The Epstein Estate was first in the chronology of settlements.

And so they set up a settlement model, right?

So non-adversarial confidential, tax-free settlement, because they claim that it could be categorized under the IRS code as compensation for an injury.

So therefore you don't have to pay income taxes on it.

And so that gets set up, right?

And who adjudicates that?

The court in the U.S.

Virgin Islands, because the state was domiciled in the U.S.

Virgin Islands, appointed on the recommendation of both parties a... an independent mediator or administrator, Simona Lelchuk, her name is, who specialized, she claimed anyway, in this sort of thing.

And she had an extra sensitivity towards sexual assault victims, she claimed.

I mean, it's kind of a phony.

We don't want to get sucked into that necessarily tangent.

But yeah, so there's an independent administrator and that was modeled, they said, on Previous consolidated settlement mechanisms such as the Jerry Sandusky.

I don't know if you recall the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State, where claims were made that this football coach had abused a bunch of boys.

And so a consolidated settlement program was set up to pay out settlements to... claimants.

Okay, got it.

So that's the Epstein estate.

So let's get to the Deutsche Bank aspect.

So then they take that model that had been set up for the Epstein estate and then they start going after major multinational banking institutions that David Boies and Bradley Edwards decide to very creatively and cleverly, I have to say allege were complicit in Jeffrey Epstein's world-spanning child sex trafficking operation and therefore reliable.

What is the nexus between Deutsche Bank or Bank of America and Epstein?

Were those the banks that he used?

Epstein banked at those institutions.

So first J.P.

Morgan from like the late 90s to 2013 roughly, and then Deutsche Bank from 2013 to 2019.

And the argument is that they should have somehow stopped his activities or failed to do a KYC or something like that.

Yeah, I mean they first started making a much more accusatory argument about their direct complicity in facilitating a sex trafficking operation.

But what the judge ultimately agreed to was that they were reasonably guilty or reasonably to be found liable for essentially negligence, because Epstein would withdraw cash and that's supposed to trigger certain monitoring activities, provisions that it was claimed JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank did not satisfactorily do.

I mean, it was kind of like a stretch of an argument, frankly.

But because of the popular climate around.

Oh, anybody who was involved in this in any way has to pay for all this pedophilic sex trafficking.

There wasn't a whole lot really, that the lawyers for those banking institutions could do to take the heat off.

So they settled, right?

So they settled.

So there are two more settlement funds.

How big are those settlement funds, those two?

So JP Morgan ended up totaling around 290 million and the lawyers end up convincing the judge who presided over this agreement in New York, the federal judge Rakoff, to grant them 30 in legal fees, or attorney's fees that they claimed.

And Deutsche Bank was around $90 million or $80 million maybe.

Okay.

So it's just to add those up now.

So the Epstein estate was around, if I'm remembering, 121 million.

And that's gone up actually, since even more litigation has been filed separated, apart from the class action settlement.

JP Morgan, 290.

Deutsche Bank around 80 or 90.

So we're already at like a half a billion dollar industry.

And there's plenty of other lawsuits and settlements that have been spawned from this thing.

And so I just have never understood, or I do understand it, so I should correct myself.

I've always found it perversely amazing that this whole aspect of this story is never mentioned, because it's led to such things as this gross inflation of the total number of victims.

You're saying that there's financial incentives.

You're saying there's financial incentives here.

And just the lawyers are, these are contingency fee plaintiff's lawyers.

They get like 30% or what's their I mean these guys are not paid by the hour, right?

No.

Well, no.

I don't think it's – no, it's not a contingency fee set up for this.

They got the judge to approve a 30 earmark of the resulting settlement funds to be given over for attorneys' fees.

So it wasn't a contingent based on the client.

It was that the judge approved 30% of the overall settlement.

Got it.

So the lawyers who sort of organized these settlement pools negotiated essentially their cut up front.

With the judge, right.

With the judge, and you're saying that was about 30% of all these very pools.

It was exactly 30%.

Okay.

Okay, got it.

But if you have a set of criteria that are so lax, I mean, J.P.

Morgan had even more lax criteria than the Epstein estate, which basically allowed anybody who ever came within two football fields of Jeffrey Epstein to file a claim against him and get a few million dollars tax-free.

But the J.P.

Morgan settlement was even more lax.

So there are people who are eventually basically rejected.

The few who are rejected from the Epstein estate fund end up getting a settlement from some of them anyway.

The JP

Morgan or Deutsche Bank fund.

So this woman, Lisa Phillips, who was like an adult model, never made any claim about anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein.

That was wrongful for like 20 years, said on a podcast publicly that She had no idea what these girls were talking about when they make these allegations against Jeffrey Epstein as of 2020.

She said this by 2023.

She's getting, you know, she never I asked her.

She didn't disclose to me her full amount, but probably around two million at least.

And then they get free health care from yet another settlement between the U.S.

Virgin Islands, the government of the U.S.

Virgin Islands and the JP Morgan that they set aside for just free health care for until 2028 for any alleged epstein victim.

Um, and it's just like.

Don't people recognize how that could be incentivized?

This inflation of the number of total victims were told must exist and that thus gives rise to this mass hysteria and moral panic about like, thousands of victims.

I mean at this bondy pam bondy hearing that was so contentious last week in the house judiciary committee you had people screaming.

Thousands of victims need demand justice.

And it's just like a concoction that is not grounded in any approximation of empirical fact.

So I always say, if people want to be mad at Pam Bondi and Kash Patel for something, be mad at them for signing off on that ridiculous memo from last July where they include that figure of over a thousand victims.

That has given fuel to the most maximalist conceptions of epstein mythology in terms of the victims that were left in their wake.

I mean, soccer always wants to and i shouldn't maybe say too much.

I'm not and i'm not trying to impugn him at all, but i do get a lot of people on the internet doing a variation with soccer did saying hey, let's just talk about the intel ties, forget all this.

You know gossip stuff around.

They are interesting.

I mean the intel ties are interesting right, sure i'm.

You know the whole story is interesting.

It's interesting that epstein apparently met michael jackson in his palm beach house and photos of it came out.

It's interesting that he consulted with everyone from Donald Trump to Bill Clinton.

I agree.

It's interesting.

Let me bring up one sort of criticism of you, and then I want to give Kevin a chance to get in here.

So, look, I think it's very important that we hold this process to evidentiary standards.

Like you're saying, I think that people's motivations need to be examined, especially the lawyers who are bringing these cases, who are reaping hundreds of millions of dollars.

So I think you are and I think even Sagar admitted this I think you're playing an extremely important role in this process by bringing some rigor and accountability to a lot of these claims.

And I think that's really important.

At the same time, you're not really offering an explanation of so many aspects that are so interesting about Epstein.

And I'm not saying it's necessarily your duty to do that, but I'm wondering if Do you have a theory of how did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars?

How did he get so connected?

Some people, like Mike Benz, have said that it all goes back to Burr Stearns, where he says that one of his accounts was BCCI, which was this notorious international bank that was involved.

It eventually was shut down because it was involved in international money laundering and crimes, things like that.

So I think this is Mike Benz's theory.

In any event, do you have a theory that would provide a satisfactory explanation for so many of the threads that we see, or do you just feel like it's not really your job to do that and your job is really more just to poke holes in what are some of the more outlandish claims of politicians or lawyers?

Well, I'm happy to address any little data point that people want to throw out at me.

I mean, I do that all day, every day, pretty much.

So it's not like I'm trying to avoid anything or be at all evasive, right?

So people ask me all the time, okay, how did he make his money?

What about Leslie Wexner, et cetera, et cetera?

So it's not like I'm unaccustomed to addressing any of this stuff.

It's just that I feel like there's a bit of a fallacy or a logical flaw in attempting to say that it's incumbent on me to proffer some kind of ultimate totalizing theory.

I have a theory I could sketch out that maybe explains some of what people would like to know, that people are so titillated by

But I think again, one of the reasons why the coverage of the story has been so horribly bad is that Speculation has replaced fact and we have this whole mythology or folklore that's developed and that people just kind of ambiently absorb and then they end up just believing things that are totally false.

So, for example, people just believe and I'm sure that you've seen this that Epstein must have referred to his private plane as the Lolita Express.

Therefore, anybody who was ever on the plane must have known that this was like a child sex trafficking plane.

Because why else would it be named the Lolita Express after the famous book about a 12-year-old girl, or whatever, who was a sexual object?

That's just like false.

I mean, there's never any evidence for that.

It was a nickname that was invented, it was a cheeky nickname invented by this British tabloid.

And so that's just one example of all this flotsam.

That gets Okay, but to go back, do you have a theory of how specifically Epstein got started?

Because somehow I guess it was in the 80s He went from someone who is just a trader at Bear Stearns to very quickly amassing a fortune that I don't know seems like hundreds of millions of dollars.

I mean, like you said, he died with about 650 million.

I don't know how big the fortune was in the 1980s.

We know that Wexner sold him the townhouse.

I guess one of the details that came out the other day, as Wexner said it, was that what he was told was fair market value.

And Epstein obtains his plane from Wexner.

I mean, is that the explanation that somehow he got his start because Wexner was extraordinarily generous towards him?

Like, I'm just curious.

Not quite.

So I mean there was a huge New York Times article.

That was one of the few helpful contributions to the popular knowledge around Jeffrey Epstein recently in December, where they go through.

I mean, they basically set out to answer the question that everybody always asks with like a wink and a nod, as though they think that the asking of the question is supposed to prove that the answer would be fundamentally sinister, meaning how did Jeffrey Epstein make his money?

Because the idea is that he must have made his money by dint of his orchestration of this pedophilic sex trafficking ring that he enforced by blackmail at the direction of the Mossad, or something like that.

And the New York Times goes into fairly forensic detail about how he ended up accumulating money over the course of the 1980, so people could go read that if they'd like.

I mean, i do think that it's fair to say and saying this does not mean that you have to have to condone everything that jeffrey epstein ever did over the course of his entire life but i do think that he was definitely very high intelligence.

I do think that he was um highly proficient in mathematics as a young man, which is why he part of why he became a math teacher at the dalton school, a pretty prestigious private school in manhattan then ends up getting recruited to Bear Stearns and ends up innovating some novel financial maneuvers that you're probably much more fluent in than me in terms of describing, because I'm not a finance guy.

But it was around a time where there was a demand for Wall Street to innovate new tactics for very high net worth individuals to structure their wealth, to lessen their tax burden, to do all kinds of other things.

And Epstein did so, and then he leaves Bear Stearns – so he rose to the ranks of Bear Stearns pretty quickly.

So around age 24 25, he was like a partner or he had some relatively high-ranking position relative to the rest of the workforce at Bear Stearns at a young age.

He starts up his own boutique financial advisory firm that's tailored specifically to very high net worth individuals, such as ultimately –.

Leslie Wexner, who's one of the wealthiest people in the United States.

Yes, Wexner was definitely Epstein's most important client.

There was the power of attorney that was handed over, which is seen unto itself on the internet to be either inherently sinister or to show us that, of course, Epstein must have been in some kind of pedophilic collusion with Wexner.

But it's explicable if you actually want to know what it was about.

At a certain point, people just want to have the ability to keep asking that question with a gleam in their eye, as though it's supposed to imply that the pedo sex trafficking is the ultimate answer to everything.

But Ghislaine Maxwell, when she gave her proper interview last summer to the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanch, in the very first time, amazingly enough that she was asked by any US government official to simply describe her experiences with Jeffrey Epstein.

Imagine that, despite having been integral, we've been told all these years in the running of the most prolific child sex trafficking operation, I guess, in world history.

Only in July 2025 did any government official ever just ask her to describe what her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was all about.

And she said that she observed Epstein doing a lot of work that would seem very complicated and intense to her in terms of his financial business.

So, for example, Maxwell says Epstein ended up basically restructuring all of the finances for Wexner's business holdings.

He owned The Limited.

He owned Victoria's Secret, other kinds of women's clothing outfits and retailers.

He had real estate developments.

Epstein was basically the money guy for all of it.

For a man who in the early 90s was already worth a couple of billion Wexner.

That is, if Epstein is getting a yearly cut of the revenues that could add up over time.

Then they had a handful of other very high net worth clients like Elizabeth Johnson, who was an heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune.

Leon Black, the hedge fund manager.

So you don't need that many extremely high net worth clients right, if you're their go-to money manager, to eventually build up a pretty nice size fortune, I would imagine.

So I'm not saying we have a full accounting of every penny that he ever accumulated over the course of his life.

But we have quite a bit of information, and it just occurs to me that some – the people who most loudly ask how did he get his money?

Almost don't even want to know or read into the information that is currently available.

All right.

Well, I mean, it is kind of unusual that – a money manager in that position would obtain that much money so quickly.

I'll just say like from my experience with the money management business, they're not generally able to charge that much.

But let me put a pin in that because I want to let Kevin Bass get in here.

I've been following your feed quite a bit.

You are basically a startup entrepreneur who got interested in the Epstein files.

I think you used AI to analyze them.

And in particular, you've been looking at Reid Hoffman's story about Epstein.

And you've put together an analysis.

I think you've called it the Reid Hoffman files.

I've been following your tweets, and it's quite interesting.

Let's start with how you got into this, what got you interested and how you've been doing your research.

Yeah, so originally I just saw that there was kind of a conflict on social media about Reid Hoffman.

I didn't know much about the Epstein files or about that particular conflict, but I was curious.

I built some really sophisticated AI tools, mostly using vectorized SQL databases and some of the MCP stuff.

With the new agents,

And for some other purposes.

And so I wanted to port those over to see if I could resolve some of these questions.

Elon had some very...

Strong opinions about Hoffman's involvement with Epstein.

And he's usually at least, if he's not always directly on the bullseye, he's usually at least a few inches away.

So I wanted to go check those out.

And then you know they came out and I guess late January, January 30th, the big ones that, the big drop that recently happened.

And so I just I started going through the Reid Hoffman part in particular and.

And I essentially started to try to organize or have organized most of my analyses around some core claims that Hoffman made about his involvement with Epstein.

I've just been asking the question, are these claims true?

Are they supported by the record or are they contradicted by the record?

And overwhelmingly, like absolutely overwhelmingly, they appear to be contradicted relentlessly by the drop that came out in January 30th.

If you want, I can go through some of the big ones and then I can also talk about Yeah.

Maybe a place to start is with Reid Hoffman's statement in 2019 to Axios.

This is when, I guess the Epstein scandal first, I think, became national news and people who are closely associated with him felt the need to characterize their relationship with him, to distance themselves, to explain how they knew him or how closely they knew him.

And Reid's statement at that time was the following.

Let me just read this out.

This is Reid Hoffman speaking.

My few interactions with Jeffrey Epstein came at the request of Joey Ito for the purposes of fundraising for the MIT Media Lab.

Prior to these interactions, I was told by Joey that Epstein had cleared the MIT vetting process, which was the basis for my participation.

My last interaction with Epstein was in 2015.

Still, by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.

For this I am deeply regretful.

Oh, give me a break.

Is that statement accurate?

Not at all.

And in fact, it's not just from 2019.

He even reiterated this on February 4th this year on X repeatedly.

He said I only know Jeffrey Epstein because of fundraising relationship with MIT, which I very much regret.

These meetings were recorded by Joe Ito, then director of MIT Media Lab.

And he also says yes with Joe Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab, who asked me to help MIT fundraise with Epstein.

I regret, blah, blah, blah.

Like, none of that's at all true.

There's very few mentions of even fundraising with MIT.

I would even go so far as to say, I don't know.

I've said it this way on some of my posts, but it's like The extent of the relationship between Epstein and Reid Hoffman.

It almost looks like best friends.

My best friends.

I don't interact with anywhere near as much as Reid Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein did between 2013 and 2019.

They're constantly in contact.

There's something around on the order of about 400 initiations by Hoffman to Epstein.

It wasn't just mediated by Joe Yito at all.

And their assistants were in constant contact with each other.

They had extensive financial relationships.

There's something like 42 different meetings that are documented.

Around 20 are absolutely confirmed.

They met in person for breakfast.

They would spend time at each other's houses overnight.

Epstein met his wife.

It is claimed that by Hoffman that he only was there for one night.

Even the one time that we have absolutely documented that he's referring to, he was there for two nights.

And almost certainly there was two other island visits as well.

In addition, it's an extraordinarily extensive personal and business relationship.

And it's not just about Joe Ito.

Now, Joe Ito was a really important part of it.

Um, Joey was sort of.

Uh, as far as I can tell again, you guys know a lot more about this than I do, but as far as I could tell, really going through the files of the last couple of days, Joey was sort of um.

Epstein's gateway into sort of academia Cambridge Harvard, science.

That's sort of his main gateway there.

Reid Hoffman was his gateway into Silicon Valley, into tech, the main guy.

And so there is a very close relationship as well between Joe Ito and Hoffman, but there is also very much an independent relationship between Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein, very much independent of Joe Ito.

Okay, so Reid claimed that he only had a few interactions with Epstein.

That's false.

You're saying he had hundreds?

Hundreds.

Including dozens of in-person meetings and stay at the island at least once.

You said for two nights, not one, and there were probably a second or third visit.

Yes.

There was the stay at the townhouse.

Reid claimed that all of his interactions were sort of mediated by Joey Ito and were about the MIT Media Lab.

By the way, it's not clear why someone would feel compelled to spend so much time fundraising for MIT, which wasn't even their alma mater.

So this whole explanation didn't really make a lot of sense from the beginning.

But it's pretty clear that the topics of conversation were not about MIT or MIT Media Lab.

In fact, I thought one detail that was really kind of interesting was Their first interaction.

One of the first was about they bonded over a book called Deception, which I haven't read the book.

I don't know what the thesis is, but it appears to justify the use of deception in certain circumstances.

Anyway, I just think that was ironic, I guess, if nothing else.

Can I make a quick comment?

Yes, go ahead.

Yeah, Michael, go ahead.

Do you want to be Reid's defense attorney in this context?

Not exactly, although I end up, I guess, putting myself into a position where I can come across that way.

I'm really trying to be the defense attorney for sanity.

So here's what I would say.

I have to just reject the whole premise of this discussion that is so ubiquitous now, which is that anybody who so much as exchanged a chortling email with Jeffrey Epstein and I know Reid Hoffman apparently had a closer relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than just one Email here or there.

But the principle that anybody who had some interaction of some degree, to some degree or another Jeffrey Epstein, now has something that they have to issue these mealy-mouthed, melodramatic statements of profound apology for is just so tedious and ridiculous.

What are they guilty of?

If the implication is that they're by association guilty of enabling pedophilic sex trafficking...

That is a flagrant misconception.

Do people know how come it's never clarified that Jeffrey Epstein was never even accused of committing any illicit sexual acts against any person under the age of 18 after the year 2005?

So I don't know what years Reid Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein interacted, but this idea that he was looking the other way while all these preteens were being raped is just nonsense.

But the media never clarifies it.

So now we have everybody from Noam Chomsky to Steve Bannon being told that their reputation is in tatters and they are themselves, like by association, some sort of like sex criminal enablers, and it's just a total fantasy.

And it's part of this moral panic.

Michael, I think you're making some really interesting points.

I think they're important.

I think...

I mean, Epstein pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges in 2008.

You're saying Reid Hoffman and Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon should have all said oh, because the guy pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges, which they were.

That means nobody can ever consort with him ever again, for the rest of his life.

I think that's a ridiculous standard.

There's two different issues here.

One is whether or not there's this global pedophile ring and you know We can even go further and there's these satanic rituals and all this other stuff, which I'm inclined to think that you're very close to the truth in what you're saying.

On the other hand…

There are Reid Hoffman's public statements like dramatically minimizing the relationship.

Now, sure, I think that can easily obviously be explained.

There's an obvious explanation where we don't have to necessarily impugn to Reid Hoffman, you know, being a pedophile or any of these other things that people are wanting to suggest, because he lied.

And the alternative explanation is just that this is such a hot potato.

There is a hysteria.

So people lie about their relationship with Epstein, even though they're not guilty of something that's terrible behind the scenes.

Any association at all is radio with Epstein is radioactive.

I mean.

But so if somebody lies, then I mean they can be condemned for the lie, because that's what we're talking about.

Like Howard Lutnick, made up a ridiculous lie that was totally pointless and actually counterproductive for his purposes.

And the lie itself can be condemnable, but not necessarily because Howard Ludnick is covering up any kind of pedophilic sex criminality, just because of the moral hysteria that's been allowed to be unleashed around this stuff, where any connection in any way to Epstein is grounds for censure.

Yeah.

All right.

Let me tell you my point of view on this.

So, first of all, I think you're correct that there's a lot of guilt by association happening and there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy.

And, Like you said, just because someone emailed Epstein doesn't mean that they were involved with him in some nefarious way.

And I thought it was unfair when Sager mentioned that Jason had emails with.

Epstein back in 2011 to make an introduction.

I think that's an example.

I hadn't even seen that.

I mean, it's not important enough even to draw my attention.

Like, who cares?

There's plenty of interesting material in the files, but like random emails.

No, no, I agree.

And that's why I tried to defend Jason there because I know there was just nothing to that.

Now, in the case of read, I think that there's a couple of things that are interesting about this.

Number one is when this new Epstein files drop happened.

Reid came out on X and very aggressively started pointing the finger at other people, wildly accusing both Elon Musk and Donald Trump of somehow being involved in Epstein's purported crimes.

And this is just a classic case of someone throwing stones while living in a glass house.

I mean, you look at his own statements from 2019, all the way up to weeks ago, and they don't hold water at all.

He lies about the extent of his relation with Epstein, how many times they met, what the subject matter was, what the context was, how many times he visited the island potentially.

I mean, just one lie after another, while again, wildly accusing other people.

And you do have to just ask, what is going on here?

I mean that just goes to show how weaponizable this whole thing is and how the Epstein story or any kind of tangential connection to Epstein can be leveraged to serve some kind of preexisting agenda.

So if, like Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk, don't like each other, then they could accuse each other of like having a more – a closer connection to Epstein than they did.

And it's just like a slugfest.

And yet I'm still struggling to understand what the underlying accusation of wrongdoing is supposed to be, above and beyond just how perhaps Reid Hoffman and or Musk, or whomever, might have misrepresented the relationship.

Well, the question is also partly like why did he need to so aggressively attack others?

Why did he need to so aggressively lie about the relationship?

Is it just that he's covering himself because of a moral hysteria or is there – I don't know.

Well, I mean my theory on this.

I think it's kind of obvious.

What he's doing is that, by pointing the finger at Trump or Elon actually both He's driving everyone into their partisan tribes so as to, I think, seek protection of the Democrat tribe, to which he's contributed hundreds of millions of dollars.

And I think it's worked.

I mean, you look at the mainstream media coverage of this, the New York Times coverage of it, which we talked about in a previous episode of the show.

They wrote an article about Epstein's ties to Silicon Valley.

Other people who had far less extensive of a relationship with Epstein got paragraphs in that story.

Reid Hoffman was only mentioned in one sentence, along with three other people.

So he does seem to be getting a pass from you.

Know Michael, if you want to categorize this as a feeding frenzy, or moral panic, or hysteria or what have you, whatever it is, he seems to be getting a pass from the media.

And my point about this has not been to accuse Reid of crimes, because I don't think we have any basis for that whatsoever.

Let me just state that clearly.

Isn't there a fallacy of all this then?

No, well, let me get to that.

My point has just been that the media needs to cover this in a fair and even-handed way, as opposed to, like you said, weaponizing it to go after the people they don't like because there's political advantage in that.

Or another parallel is Hillary Clinton just came out this week and gave an interview on the BBC where she said we, the Clintons, Bill and I we had no real connections with Epstein but Donald Trump We can just assume as unassailably true that he's in the process of orchestrating a cover up because he has something to hide.

And, on the other hand, Trump will toggle back and forth between Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman.

They're the ones who are truly implicated by their association with Epstein.

I had nothing really to do with the guy.

And then the next day he'll say oh, I'm a little upset or rueful that Bill Clinton's been dragged into this mess and it just gets you know, framed around, organized around, just like a partisan battering ram.

And it just becomes incredibly tedious because there doesn't even have to be any more any concrete allegation of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

There's no credible allegation of any pedophilic wrongdoing by either Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, anybody.

It's like, what are we talking about here ultimately?

We're in this other domain of who can establish the most damning guilt by association, even though nobody can spell out what the guilt is supposed to be tied to.

Well, but here's the question is, why did Reid so brazenly lie about his relationship with Epstein?

It could just be... Why did Howard Lipnick lie?

Well, it could just be that he wants to protect his reputation in business by minimizing the association.

But obviously when you lie that extensively and that brazenly about it, it is going to make people think that you have something to cover up.

And People think a lot of dumb things.

I mean, is there any evidence at all that would tie Reid Hoffman to some kind of child sex crime?

No, I'm not accusing him of that.

So if people think that's what's being covered up, then they should be disabused of that fallacious notion, rather than countenancing the notion and allowing the mass hysteria to continue proliferating unhindered.

Can I ask you something, Michael?

What evidence is there for...

So on the island or in general, what evidence is there that people were being trafficked?

Maybe not miners.

Did that actually were people actually going to the island for that purpose?

Was that that extensive or not?

It's impossible to know what people even mean by trafficking anymore.

Trafficking is an incredibly nebulous concept.

It's very much open to the whims and discretion of prosecutors who seek to fit some fact pattern to a desire to prosecute somebody for some sort of sexual-related offense if it involves simply facilitating the movements of somebody from point A to point B.

So if adult women consensually flew on an airplane to go visit a luxury island in the Caribbean?

And over the course of that visit, maybe they engage in some consensual sex act.

And then 20 years later, they can retroactively classify it as trafficking.

And that will entitle them to millions of dollars in tax-free settlement money.

Are we going to take a face value that that constitutes trafficking?

Because I don't.

So I'm always a little bit mystified as to what we're supposed to understand as trafficking now.

So your overall perspective on this is basically that a lot of the discourse about this is constructed and we don't really understand the underlying facts.

Is that your?

I mean, I understand the underlying facts to the greatest degree that I can ascertain them.

And I think that they are just chronically and almost unbelievably mischaracterized everywhere you look.

Let me get you to react to this tweet that someone just mentioned you on.

Oh, here we go.

Yeah.

A brilliant feedback.

Well, this is OK.

This is a guy.

I don't know this guy's present witness, but this is what he's saying is the evidence.

OK, so I just, you know, I want to get your reaction to.

Well, let me read this for people who are just listening and can't see the screen, and then I'll get your reaction to it.

So he says, here's the evidence.

One hundred sixty million dollars from Leon Black.

Fifty million dollar townhouse and power of attorney over Wexner's estate.

Cameras in his residence wired by Israeli government compromising photos of Prince Andrew Clinton, etc.

Confirmed sex trafficking of underage girls from Maxwell Brunel and others teaching job with William Barr Prince's CIA.

Khashoggi was a client of Epstein Prince's money laundering for intelligence question mark advisor to Ehud Barak and the Rothschilds.

Rumler, who is a chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel under Obama, was a key advisor and backup executive as well.

There are millions of files still redacted.

None have been released by CA, State Department.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Anyone telling you that there's nothing to see here is attempting to whitewash the most important revealing intelligence-related story of our lifetimes.

And then he calls you out here.

Michael Tracy doesn't understand the difference between evidence and proof and is simply exploiting sexually abused women for engagement.

I mean, first of all, I don't know what that guy is even arguing.

All that stuff is supposed to be evidence of.

What is the ultimate contention that he's claiming those myriad scattered data points are supposed to justify?

I mean, that's what's so strange about this story.

Nobody can really ever articulate.

Sager struggled to articulate what I suspect actually is his ultimate belief, which is that there was some kind of pedo-trafficking operation, like he, i think, said that he agreed with the thomas massey quote that i read out to him, but on its face that's sort of like a bizarre statement to make.

So they latch on to this other peripheral stuff around intelligence and whatnot.

And that guy said how dare anyone ever say there's nothing to see here?

And he ascribed that to me.

I've never said there's nothing to see here.

People tell me all the time that i allegedly have said there's nothing to see here, but i don't say that at all.

I'm pretty much as obsessed, if not more obsessed, with this story than anyone at this point.

To a degree it's probably not very healthy, like mentally, but you're obsessed with it.

But hold on, you're obsessed with it.

Hold on michael, let me just let me ask you about that.

You're obsessed with it in the sense that you think this is a modern day salem witch trial right, which is fascinating.

Yeah, so you're fascinated from like a sociological standpoint, which is have humans evolved beyond where they were hundreds of years ago, engaging in witch hunts and things like that?

Or do you think it's interesting in other ways?

I think it's interesting in other ways, definitely in that way as well.

But there are other ways in which it's interesting.

I think it's almost interesting as an anthropological survey of sorts among elite movers and shakers, you could say, where Epstein did have this extraordinary ability to network and to convene people who probably otherwise would never have been convened.

So I've been saying that I think Jeffrey Epstein is the only man on earth who could have brought together for a friendly social powwow Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon.

Like I'm almost jealous of that.

I mean, I'm sure that would have been a very fascinating discussion to listen in on.

Right.

And there are other examples.

And so I think it's interesting from that perspective that I mean I think everything, that every little piece of information that can be uncovered about Jeffrey Epstein's life is now almost intrinsically interesting, just given the salience of the story.

Right.

So I guess I'm interested just from that perspective because like, obviously he's now a historic or world historic, even figure.

And so, yeah, I'm always I'm always down to find out something new about what Jeffrey was up to.

So sure.

I think it's interesting politically just in terms of how this can be leveraged into some sort of political battering ram against enemies.

And this is like the number one oppositional Trump narrative of the second term.

It's almost Russiagate redux in the outsized prominence that Democrats are giving it in terms of what they bring up day after day in hopes of it undercutting Trump or bedeviling him.

Yeah, it does seem to be like the new Russiagate in that way where every possible tangential fact is somehow connected.

And the whole thing kind of metastasizes and is used in a partisan, weaponized way.

Yeah and, but it's different in that there's an international component.

Like this is the number one scandal right now that's ravaging norway, slovakia.

I was mentioning obviously great britain today and other places you know, united arab emirates, um name your country.

So there's like it's been internationalized, which is just fascinating as well.

They didn't, didn't they burn like an effigy of jeffrey epstein in iran or something.

I mean, it just never ends.

So of course, there's like infinite fascinating material, at least to me.

I just don't accept that in order to be fascinated by this, we must have this weird epistemology where we can just collect all these discrepant little pieces of information, blast them out on the internet and then just think that we've done the argumentative and logical work necessary to somehow establish how that proves our ultimate notions about what the story is supposed to signify which again, is pedophilic sex trafficking enforced by blackmail that ensnared prominent individuals at the direction of some intelligence agency.

That's the crux of the epstein mythology and it's been systematically unraveled.

Included partially by this the disclosure of more epstein files, but even prior to january 30th or december 19th, the two productions.

There was never any credible evidence for any of it.

So yeah, I am fascinated in terms of how people come to believe such mythological things.

And the journalistic malfeasance again, that has been characterizing the story as well is of particular interest to me, because it's been a central factor in how the mythology has been allowed to just kind of proliferate without any countervailing point of view being put to it.

All right, i think that's a pretty good place for us to wrap up.

Kevin, do you have any final thoughts?

Um, i'll just continue releasing some of this stuff.

I uh, i tend to agree with michael but um, you know, i also think that sticking to the facts is also very important too, and telling the truth is is important in both directions as well.

So Can I just make one concluding thought?

I actually do think it's, I'm happy for this opportunity to speak on your podcast.

I assume I'm reaching an audience that probably would not otherwise hear of me to a large extent.

And because I do think it's actually very disturbing that so many people around the world are being told that it's somehow been proven or vindicated that there is a massive child rape ring or that there were mass child rapes that were allowed to be perpetrated by the highest levels of government, and then we're covered up.

Because, as I mentioned on Piers Morgan this week, it's very easy to imagine how people with a predisposition toward mental illness who hear this stuff and believe it might be driven to do something like homicidally crazy.

So I'm not predicting anything in particular.

I just think it's probably the most explosive thing to tell the mass public in terms of what it might incite particular people with a particular mental instability to do.

So I mean that's just one of the potentially detrimental effects of all this that I think it should be rationally countered to the maximum extent possible.

And I think we're going to be beset with this issue for the foreseeable future.

So at a certain point I don't know maybe there should be a little bit more momentum behind providing some degree of a rational corrective.

I mean, or does it, is it just me?

I mean, am I the only guy who's going to be doing this forevermore?

I mean there's some more who have like come to take on a little bit more of a skeptical perspective.

But well, I think we should, we have, we should be cognizant of the real world ramifications rather than just speaking about it in the abstract, or who suffers more, Reid Hoppen versus Elon Musk, all this other stuff.

I think it really is a crazy making thing that's been inculcated in the public.

Yeah.

Well look, I think both of you have performed very valuable services for the public in regards to this whole episode.

I think, Michael, you are asking really important questions about evidentiary standards.

And what is the basis for some of the more?

Let's call them Epstein maximalist claims out there again about this global pedophile ring, and so forth.

And I think you're right that when you're talking about crimes, you have to be evidence driven.

And there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy here.

And it is appropriate to ask what the motivations are of everyone involved in the story.

And you're one of the only people who are doing it.

Although it does seem like you are making a difference.

There does seem to be a vibe shift a little bit. around what you're doing.

Yeah, because most people who have their brains wired in a normal way, which would not include me would probably have a negative emotional reaction to being inundated day in and day out with accusations of personally being a pedophile or harboring depraved sexual fantasies of They're just children or whatever.

But obviously that is not the case for me.

But I can withstand it because I'm used to the torrent of vitriol.

But most people, I think, probably would be dissuaded from taking a certain angle on a certain subject if that's what they had to endure.

Well, the mob does not like being accused of being a mob, and their defense mechanism seems to be to accuse anyone who points out some of these problems, in the logic of basically somehow being involved in the crimes that they're alleging.

So in any event, I do think that you are performing a valuable service.

You know, when Hollywood dramatizes this, it's like Henry Fonda in the Oxbow incident, or maybe it's Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.

You've got a mob and you have this one lone figure who's standing athwart the mob, trying to talk sense into them.

And, you know, in real life, it's not Gregory Peck.

It's like a guy in a one bedroom apartment in New Jersey.

Yes.

For all the money I'm told I'm surreptitiously receiving from Leslie Wexner and the Mossad.

I mean, I wish I could get some better digs.

Yeah.

And Kevin, I do think that what you're doing is really important because I think that the citizen journalism here that's sleuthing through the Epstein files is turning up really interesting things.

And I do not think it's appropriate for Reid to be again wildly pointing the finger at other people, while the evidence shows that he's been bold-faced, lying about every aspect of his relation with Jeffrey Epstein.

And, to be honest, if he had just kept his mouth shut and not accused other people, I'm not even sure this would be a topic on the show.

I would just wait to let the chips fall where they may and see what ultimately comes out about this.

He kind of put himself in play by saying all of these things, and I do think it's appropriate to examine the record and assess his credibility on that basis.

You've done that job and I hope you and other people keep going through the files and actually seeing what is actually there so we can get to the truth of this story.

I agree, and thank you.

Well, let's wrap it there.

I just want to make one final point, which is even when, years ago, this was sort of a cause celeb on the right, where you had right-wing podcasts pointing the finger at Bill Clinton or other left-wing figures.

I never weighed in on this.

I wasn't sure what to think.

I still am not completely sure what to think about it.

I don't want to get over my skis in terms of overly associating myself with any one point of view, because I think when people do that they do kind of dig in.

And I'm keeping an open mind with respect to what comes out next.

It would not surprise me at all if Michael Tracy turned out to be correct, but also it wouldn't completely surprise me if some version of Sagar's version of the story proved to be correct, assuming more evidence comes out.

So I'm keeping an open mind.

I do think it's really important for us to evaluate the claims critically, which is why I think it's important to hear from people like Michael Tracy.

And I look forward to seeing what comes next and we'll address it then.

I try to be rigorously evidence-based as well myself.

So I don't discount the idea that something could theoretically come out that would undermine some of the assumptions or conclusions that I've derived from my research and reporting on this.

So I think that's A healthy epistemological habit to always be open to the possibility of something that's in contravention of your prior assumptions being presented to you.

Absolutely.

Fully agreed.

Okay, we'll leave it there.

Thanks, guys.

We'll let your winners ride.

And it said, we open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

Love you, Wes.

I'm the queen of quinoa.

It's like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

Wet your feet.

We need to get merch.

[Analyzing the Epstein Files: Between Moral Panic and Investigative Rigor]-[Prince Andrew Arrested, Epstein Mythology, Reid Hoffman Files with Saagar Enjeti & Michael Tracey]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Epstein Discourse

The "Epstein Class" vs. Media Myth-Making

The Role of Financial Incentives and Victim Narratives

The Reid Hoffman Controversy

Conclusion: The Need for Evidentiary Standards

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Analyzing the Epstein Files: Between Moral Panic and Investigative Rigor]-[Prince Andrew Arrested, Epstein Mythology, Reid Hoffman Files with Saagar Enjeti & Michael Tracey]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Epstein Discourse

The "Epstein Class" vs. Media Myth-Making

The Role of Financial Incentives and Victim Narratives

The Reid Hoffman Controversy

Conclusion: The Need for Evidentiary Standards

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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