Category: Jeffrey Epstein

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The one thing that keeps haunting me about Jeffrey Epstein is how many seemingly decent people knew something was wrong but did nothing. How can this be? Whenever I think the Holocaust, I think it couldn’t happen again because surely somebody would speak up before things got out of hand. Yet, Epstein Island, the Lolita Express come along to prove me wrong.

Jeffrey Epstein is a very small part of the problem too. There will always be assholes but, hopefully there are more decent people willing to stop injustice. This didn’t happen, at least, not for the longest time. Workers at his home, guests for the weekend all just continued on as if this was a normal way for a rich man to behave. Who am I to stop him?

There is the crux of the problem here when someone has money and power. What can I do stop him and, more importantly, what can he do to hurt me. Being in the warm sunshine of wealth and power has a price and that price is silence to their crimes. Who wants to tangle with a billionaire? They have more money and will probably win any legal struggle and not before bankrupting you.

The rich and powerful sometimes pay the price but, more often than not, they get off scot-free.

And it is still going on. All the lawyers redacting documents at the Department of Justice — marking through the names of the rich and powerful people who Epstein entertained — shielding them from justice for a few more years as many of these suspects race with death. Why exactly are they being protected? Their reputations?

I disagree that they should get this protection if all they did was spend the weekend with a known sexual predator, but it is something I could live with if I believed that anyone who partook of more than food, drink and place to sleep were being pursued. But, unless I am missing something, redaction also means the end of any investigation into what happened on Epstein Island, so I say fuck them, embarrass away. Embarrass so they lose their jobs. Embarrass so they can’t show their faces at Cape Cod. Embarrass so they can’t get their kids into elite schools.

If they are avoiding prison, they can, at the very least, be forced to hang their heads in shame. These seemingly decent people didn’t act and, if they get away with it, they will continue to keep their mouths shut as the rich and powerful continue their crime spree through 21st century America.

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I might be barking up the wrong tree here but something that rarely gets talked about regarding the Epstein Files really bothers me. Why didn’t the Biden Justice Department take action on these files when they had a chance in those long years between 2020 and 2024? It is baffling.

What is even more baffling is that until MAGA Republicans made an issue of releasing the Epstein Files, I was blissfully unconcerned about their existence or what should be done with them. I can’t recall it being an issue until the 2024 election which, in and of itself, reveals a lot. Nobody wanted to talk about it, so nobody was making an issue of it.

The question is why. I will take a wild guess here and say that they were protecting Democrats and Democratic donors from embarrassment.

Thanks to a bunch of MAGA yahoos the Epstein Files regained notoriety during the 2024 Election. They thought they could use them as a cudgel to swing at Democrats during the election. And swing they did. So hard, in fact, that Donald Trump, who probably thought he would never be forced to release them, joined in the swinging. It became an issue.

So Trump got elected, and some of his supporters continued to campaign, much to the chagrin of Trump, to see the Epstein files. Democrats, now in the minority and desperate find their own cudgel to knock Trump and the Republicans around, decided it was time for their release. Forced to do so by his Republican allies, Trump and his Justice Department redacted the files in such a way as to protect Trump and his allies while pointing the finger at the Clintons and their allies. Unfortunately for Trump, even the redacted files held a trove of information implicating Trump in Epstein’s crimes.

Now this is where things gets tricky for me. Thinking that I am a smart person and a political realist, I thought there could be nothing in the Epstein Files that actually could serve as hard evidence that Trump committed a crime. Why would the Biden Justice Department sit on evidence that could, if nothing else, damage Trump’s campaign for the presidency and elect a Democrat. Politics is rough and tumble enterprise. If you have to throw dirt on your opponent, your throw that dirt — particularly if the election is going to be close as the 2024 election was.

Yes, your allies might suffer some embarrassment or, even, God forbid, some legal trouble, but it would be worth it in order to defeat Trump — a right wing ideologue who’s personality was ill-suited for the presidency. You throw in everything plus the kitchen sink Well, apparently, I was wrong, you keep the most damaging information possible from the public.

Someone somewhere in the Biden Justice Department realized that they couldn’t just release files that were damaging to Trump. They would have to release all the files, even the ones damaging to Democrats, or nothing. Surprisingly, they opted for nothing. Protecting their allies was, then, more important than defeating Donald Trump.

Now here we are in the second year of a mad man wrecking the world all because people were afraid to reveal the bad behavior of their allies. To say that these people have distorted values is an understatement. They are willing to prop up a rotting system with an array of bad actors. Why? Well, maybe, we might be about to find out.

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It is easy to scoff at all these rich and powerful men found in the Epstein Files who claim that they didn’t know what Epstein was up to. How could they not know? It is kind of willful ignorance that protects humans from the horror going on around them. It allowed Germans to deny knowing about concentration camps and Southerners to overlook their neighbors lynching of a Black man.

Plausible deniability. I had my suspicions but no real facts. How embarrassing for me if I made a scene about my friends being involved in a crime and then everything turns out to be on the up and up? What would my friends think of me? The bigger concern is how will I fit in afterwards if I am wrong and not justice for the victims. This reasoning, as ruthless as it is, is sound. Rich and powerful men can help me while trafficked women do nothing for the balance sheet.

It is easy when looking in the rearview mirror to say you would do the right thing now that all the Epstein horrors are revealed. But, in the actual moment, would you make that same decision? What would I do if I was at a private island with lots of young women and powerful men, how would I act? More importantly, even if I did nothing except enjoy the man’s drinks and food, what does that say about me? Some of these men didn’t personally take advantage of any girls. On the other hand, they failed to protect any of them from these predators.

But then, what is the right thing? Can I get away with just leaving the island? What if I have to ask my host for a boat off? What if he asks why? Do I confront the man? Or should I wait until I am off the island and tell the police? If the police do nothing, does this end my culpability or should I leak this information to reporters? Once you have committed yourself to looking the other way, you are pretty much out of options on how to continue. You are covering your ass from then on. That so many people decided to do nothing, speaks volumes about the difficulty of crossing powerful men.

It ain’t pretty but any rational person evaluating this situation would do the same. Who is more likely to win this battle — a billionaire with plenty of money, power and friends in high places or a teenager from a broken home and no money. If everyone is going along with something, why should I raise a stink about it? Who am I to protest? Why should I risk my life, my family’s position, my income to rescue someone I don’t even know?

I am not saying to forgive the people who failed to act here. They should have and, because they didn’t, they need to suffer the consequences of their inaction. What concerns me more is how easy it is for good people to be sucked into evil enterprises mostly because they are afraid what will happen to them and to their families. All those people, chomping at the bit, to be invited to Epstein Island where nothing is forbidden and now, 20 years later, finding out that dancing with the devil carries a horrible price.

What would I do if I were in their shoes? The question haunts me. I would like to think I would be a hero. Pulling the young girls behind me, guns blazing, picking off body guards left and right, commandeering a boat and speeding safely away from this den of iniquity. But, sad to say, this just doesn’t sound like something I would do.

It is damn difficult to do the right thing and I pray that I never am put into a position where I have to prove it.

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I have to give Donald Trump credit. He has an incredibly canny sense of self-preservation. Take the Epstein files.

His release has been pure genius.

First, he heavily redacted anything that could implicate him or his cronies. This can change, yes, but it has bought him time and given his age and health, he could die before any evidence directly implicating him is ever revealed.

Then, he is slow releasing the files which surprisingly works to his advantage. There is just too much evidence for any one person to evaluate. He is complying, at least partially, with the law. It may not be the names they want but Trump has delivered names. The media, who are just itching for names to splash in their headlines, are happy as larks going after Prince Andrew or whatever he calls himself now. They just wanted names and Trump gave them big names. Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson will keep them happy for the foreseeable future.

The names he has released are strategic. Mandelson and Prince Andrew are perfect targets since he could give two shits about the UK and Prince Andrew. Trump is more than happy to help bring down the British government that he sees is unfriendly to him. Prince Andrew is just collateral damage.

So Trump lives on to fight another day while living his trademark chaos for someone else to clean up after.

In the meantime, he has delayed any personal embarrassment the Epstein files might cause him. Time enough to start a war or cancel an election or do anything spectacular enough to keep the hounds in the press pool occupied while he continues to use the presidency as his personal credit card. For a man with such limited abilities, he seems to have easily out maneuvered the brighter minds that oppose him.

I think of this every time someone says we finally have Trump cornered. Well, yeah, OK, but, on a pretty regular basis, I remember people saying Trump is cornered (think grabbing their pussies, think Russiagate) and he always magically wiggles out with nary a scar to show for his trouble. So I will believe Trump is cornered when I see his scalp on somebody’s pelt. Until then, he isn’t cornered.

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Occasionally, after writing a post, I have this wait a minute moment. I realize that I didn’t quite write what I wanted to say. This happened to me last night after I posted regarding the Epstein Files. I realized I wanted to emphasize a point more strongly than I did.

What is bothering me here is that the Biden Justice Department sat on these files for 4 years. The pressure for releasing these files came from MAGA and Donald Trump. Trump is rarely held accountable by his supporters, latched on to the issue during the 2024 campaign because it was useful then, probably thinking that once he took office he could forget any he promises he made about the files. MAGA deserves a little credit for holding him to his promise because some MAGA members continued to campaign for their release even after Trump tried to bury them again. Democrats joined the bandwagon because Trump was president now and the files could be used as a cudgel to use against him. They were counting on maximum embarrassment to Trump and the Republicans.

Unfortunately the files uncovered a much more insidious problem — a lot of political and business elites think it is ok for themselves to enjoy sexual relations with trafficked women and girls and they expect other people in the elite club to look the other way and protect them if they get caught. Sadly, it looks like they might get away with it.

Given the heavily redacted documents which prevents further investigation from people outside of the Department of Justice and Todd Blanche’s opposition to further prosecution, it looks like the most these men will endure is a little embarrassment and perhaps a job loss here and there. Not much, I would say for participating in a global sex trafficking ring. But we can’t have VIP’s being embarrassed, now can we?

What has me roiled here is that Joe Biden could have released these documents while he was president. Prior to Trump’s second inauguration, I don’t recall many Democrats all that enthused about their release. Biden’s Justice Department could have redacted the documents instead of Trump’s. But, for some reason, nothing happened. Oh, right they were protecting the poor women who were abused by Epstein and Maxwell. I thought that was the purpose of redacting the documents — protecting the victims. So, that particular excuse simply doesn’t hold water. So why did they sit on these documents and do absolutely nothing for 4 years? Protecting rich powerful men from prosecution is the only thing I can com up with.

This leads me back to the conclusion — Trump is not the problem. He is a symptom of a greater problem — a system that clearly is broken and no plausible way to fix it. Sigh.

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Every so once in awhile I realize that Donald Trump is a diversion from the real problem. The latest release of Epstein File documents made me focus again on the bigger issue here — the rich and powerful are misbehaving and getting away with it and have absolutely no interest in changing things.

This is apparent because after 20 years of investigations into Epstein, only two people have been convicted of any crime — Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Pretty strange, don’t you think? If you have sexual trafficking going on, there are sellers (Epstein and Maxwell) of the girls and then there are buyers of the girls. The buyers have managed to skirt the justice system so far. Why?

The government is sitting on reams of evidence naming potential customers. None of them, except ex-Prince Andrew, who, poor thing has been stripped of his title, has had any reckoning with the law. It is more than a little telling and also disappointing that four different presidential administrations have gone by since Epstein’s first crimes were discovered, with more and more evidence accumulating with each year and the Department of Justice does nothing to pursue Epstein’s johns. This will change now that the evidence has been released, right?

Apparently no. Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General, says they don’t have any evidence that these gentlemen committed any crimes. Yes, they did socialize with known sex traffickers but that is not a crime. Blanche says this in such a way that suggests if he had some evidence to pursue these men he surely would. Right. They may not have admitted to anything but, Jesus Christ, he has names of people who might have information or, worse still, have committed crimes.

Dragging them into the police station for a few questions seems called for particularly from an administration that has no trouble blowing drug trafficking suspects out of the water without a trial. Hmm. Makes you think doesn’t it. What is the difference between a suspected Venezuelan drug dealer and a suspected Epstein party goer? Let me think.

But these rich powerful men, these best and brightest didn’t know what Epstein is up to. You can’t blame them for not seeing what was going on. They just came for a little R and R. It is possible these men coming to a secluded island with a bevy of adolescent girls didn’t know what was up. It is possible but highly unlikely. One of the more eyebrow raising effects of the released Epstein files is to witness these rich and powerful men squirming awkwardly about their culpability. They just didn’t know what old Jeff was up to.

Does anyone honestly believe that? Given that many of these men have teenage daughters of their own, the idea that they can’t eyeball a girl and gauge her age seems a bit, oh I don’t know, unbelievable. More importantly, if they are too god damn stupid to see what Epstein was doing, should they really be trusted with such important jobs. So to put in bluntly they are either liars and therefore unworthy of their position or stupid which makes them even more unworthy of their position.

The whole Epstein fiasco points to a much bigger problem than just Trump. Biden’s Justice department wasn’t doing anything with the information either and probably for the exact same reason that Trump initially didn’t want to release the files — they were protecting important men from, at the bare minimum, embarrassment and, at the worst, prosecution for sex with minors. This suggests that the system is rotten to the core. Trump going into retirement won’t change that.

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The investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide is complete. Bad employees made bad decisions. The cameras were down, Epstein didn’t have a cell mate, Epstein collected extra sheets and his watchers decided not to watch him that night. All these errors culminated in the death of Epstein. But, despite this odd convergence of completely unrelated events, there is nothing suspicious about his death.

Let me think about this for a moment. No, sorry. I am just not buying it. Epstein, a man who could provide evidence implicating Presidents, Cabinet members, and members of Congress and who had been on suicide watch before, despite all the knowledge of his importance and his suicidal tendencies, still he manages to commit suicide on the very day that the numerous failsafe procedures designed to prevent such an action fail. It was almost like he knew this would happen. How convenient.

Two low level employees have taken the fall and that will be that. This is both unsurprising and shocking. I don’t know about you but if I was the warden tasked with keeping such an important person alive, I would pay attention to how my staff was handling the person. It would be my number one priority. I would visit Epstein’s cell every day to make sure everything was in order. I would call his watchers late at night and make them go to his cell and come back and tell me his alive. I would be consumed with worry that something terrible was going to happen to Epstein. It doesn’t appear that the warden was worried much about the performance of his lower level employees.

To pawn this off as a series of misdeeds by low level employees fucking up on their daily tasks is unbelievable. I know this to be true because I used to be a lower level employee with bosses and important projects. Concerned bosses check up on important projects. Concerned bosses put their best people on important projects. They keep tabs on what is going right and what is going wrong because they know if something goes disastrously wrong, they, and not the low level employees, will be called to account for what happened. And that manager better be able to provide an explanation.

Also, speaking as an ex-lower level employee, if my boss told me that the my most important task was ensuring that my charge is alive in the morning, I would make pretty damn sure that person was alive. I wouldn’t want to explain why Epstein had extra sheets, or no room mate, or that the camera wasn’t working.

So, if the report is true, there was a stunning lack of supervision of lower level employees. For a prison. You know one of those places that house really dangerous people and that the public needs to be protected from. That is kind of why they are there. So if low level employees can fuck up so much that the most important prisoner in the building turns up dead, I might be concerned with a little more than those low level employees. That this isn’t happening speaks volumes of what is really going on here. It is a bit sad that the best case scenario is gross incompetence up and down the food chain. The worse scenarios involve corrupt prison officials and phantom assassins are even more troubling.

Artfully hidden in these reports, at least I have not read anything about it and I would think given the media’s desire for juicy tales would be at least mentioned, is the possibility that Epstein was helped in his act – either by prison employees or by invited assassins. This would seem to be an important point to address because there was a lot of speculation about this after Epstein’s death. Not a word. He committed suicide and that is that.

That nobody believes this story goes without saying. It is an insult to the public’s intelligence. The inability for investigators to provide even a plausible answer to what happened that night reveals a shocking arrogance. They clearly don’t give a rat’s ass if we believe this report. They had to provide a report, they did it, now shut up. There also is, at least so far as I’ve read, a surprising lack of outrage from the press and elected officials which moves us into even more troubling territory. Are they complicit? Are they scared?

The whole mess is disappointing. It reeks of conspiracy and cover up something I try to avoid because it makes you sound crazy but then this report does nothing to make me feel differently.

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The bad actors in this affair are easy to find and condemn – The Conspirators to Murder, the Sex Traffickers, the Corrupt Bureaucrats. There is, or I hope there is, no argument that these people have committed a crime and should be punished.  I have a bit more difficulty regarding the increasingly annoying excuses coming from the innocent bystanders however.  I didn’t know anything about what Epstein was doing. Which OK maybe you can say that if you never visited the island but anyone who had, give me a break. It was known by some people as Pedophile Island. When you are attending a party on said island, and you see a lot of teen girls running about, you might put 2 and 2 together. Apparently, though, I am wrong.  A lot of the best and brightest minds were simply unable to make this connection.

If nothing else, these bright minds showed incredibly poor judgement. The men who run our country were thrown for a loop when a bunch of sexually available teen aged girls attend a party. Some of these bright bulbs succumbed to this temptation which speaks volumes about them. What are you supposed to do when a nubile girl appears at your bedroom door? You wouldn’t want to insult your host by leaving her out in the cold, now would you?  

But the people who just ignored what was going on and just enjoyed the party without taking advantage of the human party favors, what about them?  I didn’t know what Epstein was doing isn’t a particularly reassuring stand to take when you turned your head to avoid witnessing a crime in progress. Did they really think that these girls were capable of making an adult decision about prostituting themselves? Did none of these people have teenage daughters? And these people were just regular Joes and Janes off the street.  These were powerful people. People who make a difference.  People who could have made Epstein’s life difficult if they wanted to act.  Yet, they decided to let the party go on, indifferent to the girls and not wanting to offend their host.

But the cowards are better than the people who still cling to the notion that they didn’t see anything at all. If you really and truly believe this, I have to say you are unfit for any public office much less the highest levels of government.  If you couldn’t figure out what Epstein was so obviously doing then I would say your cognitive facilities are pretty useless.  I tremble at the thought of you working with a person like Putin or the Chinese government or the Taliban. And as a lie, it simply makes you look stupid. It is so blatantly a lie that you look worse for repeating it than just refusing to talk about it. At least if you refuse to talk about there is that air of ambiguity about it.  People might suspect you of being a little fast and loose with the truth but you still have their faith that you are a sentient human being.

Which brings me to Bill Clinton.  I used to like Bill Clinton.  I voted for him twice and, if it were possible for the Democrats to nominate him, I would do so again. Nonetheless his behavior with Epstein is beyond disappointing. What exactly did he think about the girls? His wife wasn’t with him. The island has a reputation. You think that he might have been just a wee bit suspicious. Clinton is known to be smart. People actually talk about him being smart. Yet he happily RSVP’d for Epstein’s party on Pedophile Island. Did he not question why a billionaire might be inviting him to an island with the reputation for orgies with teen girls? Did he check the room for cameras? Did he have any suspicious that Epstein might be putting him in a compromising position? Clinton has two eyes. He isn’t naïve. And he, in fact, was the father of a teen-aged girl. Which means that he turned a blind eye to it. He apparently didn’t feel he had the power to take on someone like Jeffrey Epstein or Epstein had something on him or he felt he was above it all and rich men have the right to sexually abuse teen-aged girls. None of these speak highly of his character.

I didn’t know what was going on Epstein’s island. That is the story they are telling and, so far, they are getting away with it. Rich and powerful people would rather go to Epstein’s parties than cause a scene which might save some teen-aged girls from prostitution.  Which is sad.  I feel trapped in a very bad marriage. I cannot vote Republican because they are bat shit crazy. I want to keep power out of their hands. Which leaves me with morally bankrupt people like Bill Clinton. I can’t, in good conscience, ever vote Republican, so what is a responsible citizen to do? On the bright side,  I am going into with open eyes and very low expectations. There is something to be said for that.

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If nothing else, Jeffrey Epstein’s death has uncovered the pervasive rot in American society. Unfortunately for him, he was a person so loathsome that nobody really cares if he committed suicide or was murdered.  He deserved to die.  Most people are happy to have him dead, buried and forgotten.

The problem is that the man had evidence which could implicate leaders of the Democratic Party, the leaders of the Republican Party, the British Royal Family and Captains of Industry. Very important people were in the crosshairs of the cops and the American government failed to protect their prime witness in a high security prison no less.  Every fail-safe procedure available in such circumstances failed. A man on a suicide watch commits suicide. The technology failed. The staff failed. And Jeffery Epstein decides on this day when all the fail-safes were failing to commit suicide. A remarkable coincidence, don’t you think?

Any half way sentient being would find this a little difficult to believe. Yet, this is what we were told and this is the answer we are letting the powers that be get away with. I was really offended that a better explanation wasn’t provided. I mean come on. Really. This is your explanation. Nobody believes it. And I mean nobody. It is an insult to the American Public that it is being offered as the definite result of an extensive investigation.  

Then it slowly dawned on me that this wasn’t about giving a somewhat believable explanation about what happened, they don’t care if anyone believes their story. The powers that be saw a bigger problem.  They wanted to warn people away from investigating Epstein’s death. If you want to find out what happened to Epstein, you are putting your life into danger. We killed once and do you really want to take a chance that we won’t kill again?  You have been warned. I don’t know about anyone else but message received.

You can tell it was important to the powers that be because it took staggering levels of corruption to pull this hit off. A billionaire just doesn’t die in prison without a lot of buy in from powerful people. I imagine a group of men in a gentlemen’s club, smoking cigars and drinking fine whiskey,  passing the hat around to get enough money to deal with the Epstein problem.  Nice guy, great parties but we can’t take a chance with the old scoundrel, every one pony up $100,000 and we can give the old boy the send-off he deserves.

Two low level prison employees have taken the fall although it beggars belief that these two were the only ones involved. The right person had to get into the prison. The right people had to be guarding. The right tech people had to turn off the right equipment.  Money men and lawyers had to move money to the right people so that the right strings were pulled. A lot of people, up and down the food chain, were involved in ensuring Epstein met his fate. But since it didn’t really matter that anyone believed what happened or, God forbid, take responsibility for what happened, the two prison guards supplied enough rolling heads to finish off the story.

After seeing this crime spree from our social betters, I find it particularly irksome that Americans still cling to the notion that the rich are good stewards of money. They are, quite obviously, not. Think about the cash it took for Epstein to create his pedophile island, find underage women to fly over to his island, fly over his guests so they could partake in the amusements pedophile island had to offer.  Think of the money spent by Epstein to defend his crimes in court.  Think of the money spent by Epstein’s friends to silence him. As far as I am concerned, we would all be better off if the government taxed Epstein and his ilk and the money received was spent giving every skid row bum in the USA a six pack of beer and a pack of cigarettes. Perhaps some girls would have been saved from the indignity of becoming prostitutes for the world’s power elite.