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My intuition has always been that the Epstein scheme was far less elaborate than is often claimed online for several reasons.
The most incriminating quote is the alleged suggestion by Acosta that Epstein “belonged to intelligence”, meaning the CIA or some allied intelligence agency doing business with the CIA (implicitly Mossad). But is that actually the case? There are countless powerful or semi-influential figures who exist in the gray area where they sell intelligence or have a business relationship with the agencies without their operation being “an intelligence operation”. My own interpretation of that quote is that it meant Epstein was powerful enough that someone brought his name up with someone senior enough to hint that the investigation should be light-touch. That might be because he was an asset, or it might be because Epstein had collaborated with intelligence on occasion or knew powerful people, which we know he did.
All the evidence we have suggests that the scheme was primarily for Epstein’s own sexual gratification. He had a penchant for schoolgirls going back to at least his time teaching at Dalton. All of the victims were primarily victimized by him. An industrial-level scheme built around selective extortion of super rich men to whom Epstein pimped out his child prostitutes might see a dealer dabble (as most pimps do) in his own product, but they’re never the primary consumer. No drug dealer consumes the majority of their own supply.
Maxwell’s Mossad connections are overstated. Maxwell was a rich half-Jewish British girl (her mother was a Huguenot Protestant) and dilettante whose father bought her into Oxford and who had by all accounts little ambition. Her father, as a publisher, con artist and Labour MP, used his connections to expedite arms deliveries to Israel during the critical period in the Cold War where it transferred its primary allegiance during from the Soviets to the West. This made him a hero among some in that generation at Mossad, but a purported connection with his daughter’s on-again-off-again boyfriend’s involvement in a sex-trafficking scandal thirty years later is relatively spurious; there is no good evidence Maxwell senior ever met Epstein. Epstein himself was born to an American Jewish family with zero Israeli connections whose own charitable instincts were much less Israel-centric than peers of his generation. If the Mossad was organizing a sex trafficking scheme to target American billionaires from the ground up, why not pick a substantially more loyal and equally well connected rich person?
You don’t need to blackmail rich American Jews into supporting Israel. This, to me, is the single most obvious argument against the entire alleged scheme as a Mossad project. The absolute majority of the important alleged co-accused were Jewish. For every Clinton (who was post-office at the critical time), Trump (random real estate developer at that time) and Prince Andrew (powerless) were at least as many Blacks, Dubins, Dershowitzes and so on, if not many more. Wexner himself (the source of pretty much all Epstein’s wealth) was and is a Jew and a Zionist. If you’re Mossad, you really don’t need to blackmail these people with videos of them fucking 16 year olds to get them to support Israel; they’ll do it for free. The whole point of blackmailing someone is to get them to do something they don’t want to do.
Epstein killing himself doesn’t mean anything. Many people would kill themselves in a similar position. That the prison was supposed to prevent suicide doesn’t change anything either; many people kill themselves while on suicide watch; he may well have paid his lawyers to smuggle something in. He was going to jail forever, had lost everything, would be in solitary confinement for the rest of his life (and/or get stabbed like Chauvin) and was never going to touch a woman ever again. Why wouldn’t he kill himself?
The fascinating thing about Epstein isn’t his fall, it’s his rise. This is the curiosity, and it’s something that will always fascinate those who are interested in this story. He was a real life Gatsby, he truly did come out of nowhere, he parlayed seducing a student into getting a job with her father on a trading desk, parlayed that into doing business in London at the height of the first Arab oil boom with Khashoggi, parlayed that into ripping investors off in a Ponzi scheme that he escaped by tattling on everyone else, then seduced a closeted billionaire clothing tycoon into letting him manage his money, skimming off hundreds of millions plus a mansion on the upper east side and rinsing him for the best part of a billion dollars. Then he set out to become a socialite and a friend to the super rich, indulged his philia for teenage girls by funding a couple of seedier modeling agencies, and merged the two in a wide-ranging pimping operation with his brother that nevertheless had him at the center, because even the richest men in the world will be friends with you to fuck hot teenagers. Did he do a little business with intelligence on the side, when he had something to trade for his continued liberty? I’m sure of it. But that’s not the heart of the story, which is one man’s almost unimaginable audacity and determination to gain wealth and power by any means necessary.
"Belonged to intelligence" relies on Vicky Ward's reporting that an un-named former senior White House official told her he said that. Ward is not exactly a credible source.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47815/was-the-prosecutor-in-the-first-epstein-trial-told-that-epstein-is-an-intelligen
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/why-didnt-vanity-fair-break-the-jeffrey-epstein-story
It's the unnamed source shit that makes this claim suspect imo though, what's wrong with Ward? Acosta putting the blame on some unknown official and then denying it seems more parsimonious to me than that Ward made it up.
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The rise of Epstein's wealth and influence is extremely mysterious and not explained by your theory. Keith Woods put together a list of circumstantial bullet points:
Details of the story, like Epstein being given a $77 million house for free by Les Wexner, make no sense unless we assume it's part of an intelligence op. I haven't dug too deeply into the story myself, it's pretty obvious Epstein is related to Israeli intelligence (not necessarily Mossad) and that's why the Epstein documents will never be released.
I did watch the documentary and was struck by the interview of Maria Farmer in which she related strong Jewish supremacism within the group, which is something you would not expect a Gentile sexual abuse victim to make up out of the blue so it seems credible to me:
All of those things either back me up, are addressed in my comment, or are irrelevant.
Taking them one by one:
Epstein’s wealth, influence, connections and likely even the trafficking scheme (given his history with the seedier side of French modeling agencies) all predate his ever meeting Ghislaine Maxwell in the early 1990s, making this extremely unlikely.
So again, this is a blackmail scheme by rich Zionist Jews to blackmail…each other…into supporting Israel?
Wexner was a notorious ‘confirmed bachelor’ with no interest in women or girls until he married late in life to a woman in her late thirties to have some heirs. Epstein also never procured boys (not because there are no gay billionaires who would bite, but because he wasn’t interested in them, lending still further credence to my theory) His friends and close business associates in NYC spent the 1980s believing that Epstein was Wexner’s boyfriend, and there is every evidence he was, and that it was likely on this basis (a mentor-mentee relationship between an older and younger man that spans business and pleasure being not uncommon, historically or at the present, for gay/bi men) that Epstein was given control over Wexner’s money (skimming hundreds of millions in fees off the 1980s/90s equity booms) and then given his mansion when he moved back to the Midwest to settle down.
There is no evidence that Robert Maxwell ever met Epstein, even though they would both have been in the UK in the late 1970s. In addition, none of Maxwell’s close business partners remembered any involvement with Epstein. Lastly, Maxwell liked Ghislaine but trusted her little with his actual interests, which he left to his sons, neither of whom liked Epstein and who regarded him as a cad who had seduced their sister (as told by their friends and themselves).
Yes, indeed. So The Mossad, which has a long-standing policy of not targeting Zionist Jews, embarks on a colossal and expensive operation to blackmail its greatest supporters in America, people who support Israel for free, in order to gain unspecific blackmail material against them for no particular reason. (Why? Traditionally kompromat exists to prevent defection for selfish reasons; unless you believe Jewish in-group loyalty is so weak that even Dershowitz would sell out Israel at the drop of a hat, this is ridiculously unnecessary in this case).
Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jewish according to Jewish law.
This reminds me of the banger that KulakRevolt (RIP) posted on X:
But there is no Mafia right? "Oh he didn't trust his daughter with his interests, she's definitely not a spy like her father!" Uh-huh.
Yes on the one hand you have this constellation of circumstantial evidence, and on the other hand denials and cover stories which you would completely expect even if it were an intelligence operation. I do not find the Epstein/Wexner love story a better explanation of Epstein's wealth which came out of nowhere or of his connections with Maxwell, Israeli politicians etc. You also downplay Acosta claimed he was told Epstein "belonged to intelligence" in receiving an unprecedented plea deal and getting the FBI investigation essentially covered up. And now the FBI cites National Security interests in not releasing the Epstein files. Embarrassing billionaires wouldn't be a national security issue, exposing foreign intelligence operations would be.
The other thing is that "Israeli intelligence" is not only Mossad.
Maxwell is identified as Jewish in Florida prison, where she is entitled to a Kosher meal that is 6x more expensive than those given to incarcerated second-class citizens. Among other perks.
That would be a result of self-identification, no? There are “messianic Jews”, Christians who keep kosher, who would be entitled to the same. Many states have already replaced kosher and halal meals in both state and federal prisons (which seem to handle catering on a state level) with vegan ones (that cost the same $2ish as regular meals in Arizona, for example). Online, the only discussion I can find that is Florida specific for federal prison meal costs suggests that (1) most of those requesting kosher meals are Muslim, as what is kosher is necessarily halal and (2) that it was roughly $4.50 a day for the kosher meal versus $3 for the regular meal, a difference of 50% rather than 600% and likely explained entirely by economies of scale.
You don’t have any actual counter arguments to any of my points. There is no logical reason for Israel to blackmail its staunchest supporters at no benefit to itself.
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Other arguments are valid, but I'm not sure if this is a particularly good argument on its own. Sure, rich Jewish Americans (and a lot of other Americans besides) will revert to supporting Israel even without blackmail, but there's levels of support; someone who will offer Israel basic support might still balk at giving considerable proportions of their property, offering support in any and all cases including Israel committing a genocide (exceeding current actions at Gaza) or nuking something, committing potentially criminal acts etc.
Also, someone being powerless or low-powered now does not mean they'll be so in the future, at the alleged time of the acts Trump had already expressed interest in presidency, Bill Clinton was a very potential first husband of a future president, and Prince Andrew was a plane crash away from the throne. If you WERE an intelligence agency amassing a blackmail file, of course you'd benefit from a wide trawl among the elite class in general.
None of them gave the majority of their property to Israel, Mossad is broadly aligned with less extreme factions in the Knesset (certainly compared to the most extremist religious zionists), and if anything the kind of existential threat that would prompt Israel to use nukes would supercharge Jewish-American support for it in financial and political terms. Lastly, blackmailing your biggest supporters is also liable to backfire when it comes to their support, word still travels, and Mossad has a general and only occasionally and carefully violated policy of not targeting Jews to preserve broad Jewish support for Israel, and even when it does usually only committed anti-Zionist activists, not people who mostly support them.
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I accept this take, except point 5. While a fit of depression could explain suicide--- and that wouldn't necessarily be surprising--Epstein had (cough) gotten off before, and with considerable leniency.He couldn't expect the same freedom this time, obviously due to the high profile nature of his case, but the whole nature of the "Epstein didn't kill himself" bit isn't that depression is impossible, but that he was capable of naming names and thus too inconvenient to allow to live. Until that is put to rest the suspicion that he was eliminated will persist. And I'm not sure exactly how it could ever be put to rest.
Naming names is only worth something to you if it gets you off the charge or at least a much reduced sentence. It was clear at that point on the strength of the reporting and with the number of victims that had come forward that he wasn’t getting out of jail alive even if he lived a long life. His own lawyers, indeed any lawyers, would have told him that. He was almost 70; there was nothing prosecutors could or would offer him that offered a realistic prospect of release given the strength of public and political pressure for his conviction on extremely serious charges.
At that point, the only motivation to spill would be revenge at no benefit to himself. If that was what Epstein wanted he could have set up a dead man’s switch, have sent an email to Wikileaks, whatever. But why? There is every chance Epstein considered many of these people his friends, and there is a great deal of evidence that he enjoyed their company, especially of people like Dershowitz, Minsky and Prince Andrew. Why would he screw them over in an act of impotent revenge to shave 10 years off a 50 year prison sentence (aged 66). Again, public sentiment and media attention was such that a real sweetheart deal was impossible (unlike in the early 2000s); he wasn’t going to be going to Club Fed or getting out in 5 years.
The guy who ratted out John Gotti received a suspended sentence and probation for nineteen murders, including the murder of a police officer. I’m pretty sure a pimp could get a suspended sentence for ratting out a massive conspiracy to blackmail half the United States government.
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I mean, the guy who turns on his buddies for not coming in clutch the way he expected is very much a thing.
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