I can't get past the paywall, what is the evidence he's trafficked underage girls?
He might've been connected to intelligence agencies and helped to blackmail people. But if he did, the simpler explanation is that it was for financial issues, not pedo stuff. No girls except one mentally ill unreliable witness has ever claimed to have been trafficked to other men
Much Greenwald's article builds the circumstantial evidence for the intelligence connections. If you grant the intelligence connections are likely, and acknowledge that honey pot schemes have been part of the playbook for decades, it becomes the most likely way for him to help blackmail. The was also the sheer volume of girls involved, more than 1000 some sources have claimed.
Does he have an explanation for why only one unreliable girl has claimed to have been trafficked to other men? Many, many have come forth to testify, anonymously or publicly, against Epstein. When you take into account none have against other men, I think Occam's Razor turns the other way
The article you link concerns Epstein's connection to Israel, not the claim that he was sex trafficking to other men. It wouldn't be at all surprising if Epstein had dealings with Israel or with pro-Israel groups given that he was so closely associated with so many rich Zionists. But that doesn't provide any evidence for the sex trafficking claim.
Why did his procurer get 20 years in the slammer if there was "no evidence". Woman in jail. Man who killed himself in 60 seconds in a "secure cell" when the cameras watching him magically went dead. Those two things alone are enough to convince any reasonable person that "These are not the drones you're looking for" is the meme for whoever is trying to hide whatever.
I don't think it's reasonable to rule out even mentioning Russiagate. Ten years is not far enough in the past to say Democrats are completely immune from conspiracy theories.
If Democrats had one conspiracy theory a decade ago and Trump has been posting on a weekly or daily basis even crazier conspiracies, and conservatism is dominated by a nonstop stream of conspiracies, then yes the MAGAs have lost all the high ground here. I don’t even believe that Russiagate is anywhere near as crazy as what MAGAs believe in but you don’t even need to get into that to make the point.
You're right to argue about how vulnerable the Right is to conspiratorial thinking, but there are left-wing conspiracies (CIA dumping cocaine in African American communities, Ronald Reagan negotiating with terrorists for hostage releases, etc.).
The Russia investigation was absolutely legitimate and found dozens of contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian agents and cutouts. The Republican led Senate investigation reached the same conclusion. Most of the media reporting, such as about the Trump Tower meeting that Trump originally denied happened, then helped Don Jr. craft a response for, turned out to be accurate.
Comparing that to all the right wing influencers making up theories — not to mention Trump’s personally selected VP, FBI director, Chief of Staff and Attorney General — is absurd.
I guess I'm open to reading an article about it if you have one. Some pretty important theories that were taken seriously at the time seem highly unlikely to be true.
Russian hackers used a phishing email to obtain and leak internal documents of the Clinton campaign, in the belief that this would benefit Trump's electoral chances. Trump publicly asked Russia to hack and leak Clinton's "missing emails". Putin publicly said he was interfering in the US election. Whether there was a direct connection or not, investigating this is not a conspiracy theory.
If he is I have not seen credible evidence of it. I don't recall that being something that was speculated on. The most dubious thing I remember of the time was the Steele dosier thing, which was generally reported as coming from an unreliable source. Naturally this was seized as being representative of the entirety of the claims of Russia influence. Then again, I do my best not to listen to nutritional supplement salesmen, so maybe I'm misremembering.
Wow. Straight up lies. You cannot believe for a minute that if there was evidence that Donald Trump did something illegal in the presence of Jeffrey Epstein, and it was known by the Democrats, and it wouldn’t be on the front page of the New York Times every single day for the past five years.The Democrats tried to kill him, jail him, bankrupt him, spread lies about his collusion with Russia… If they had evidence, we would know about it. Your TDS is so unbecoming.
How does the fact that the Epstein/Trump friendship broke up in 2007, when Trump banned Epstein from Mar A Lago for hitting on a member’s daughter, fit into your analysis?
Forgive me if I'm missing something. I watched Richard's conversation with Michael Tracey (I couldn't read the articles linked in #1 behind a paywall) and did not see several elements of this entire debacle addressed. Why would Bondi claim that the DOJ has thousands of videos of evidence involving hundreds to thousands of victims if Epstein was not trafficking these victims for others? If Epstein and Maxwell acted alone or within a very small circle, how and why did Epstein accrue so much wealth and influence among some of the famous people in the world? Would that not pointlessly draw a lot of attention to himself for no reason?
To me, the least baseless and "conspiratorial" position with the current evidence is that there was a trafficking ring involving many influential people. However, Epstein purposefully associated himself with obviously innocent figures, such as Stephen Hawking, to obfuscate this and create a serious dilemma for any investigators who would need to determine who around him did and did not engage in any impropriety, thereby disincentivizing them to prosecute anyone.
He got his wealth scamming rich people. You can look up Gregor McGregor or FireFest; charismatic nobodies scamming the rich for massive sums has gone on for centuries.
The real thing that was pointless was Epstein sexually assaulting girls. We have tons of testimony from victims he brought them to his home and made them have sex with him while they were as young as 14. If he was some Machiavellian sex plotter, he wouldn't have been rapping them himself en masse
I'm agnostic on whether Epstein was a sex trafficker, but I don't know why the fact that Epstein himself raped teenage girls is a disqualifying piece of information for him to find other people who wanted to rape teenage girls and provide them.
Don't get high on your own supply doesn't seem to be a real thing in other segments of life, so I don't get why people believe it about criminal activities.
He was clearly an insane level sex addict/horndog, most of the witnesses involved in his prosecution said he was going through 3 girls every day. There's no question he bought sex and often from teenagers, for himself, just not great evidence he trafficked for others. As for all his money, it's pretty clear, he set up fake shell companies in other countries and tax havens and crafted various scams to help billionaires not pay taxes. Rich people pay good money for that. that's where it came from. Leon Black paid him a few hundred million, but Epstein set of tax shelters so that he didn't have to pay TWO BILLION in taxes…a hundred million in fees is chump change compared to that.
I agree there's no good evidence he trafficked girls to others rather than just being an insane level sex addict himself he hired a massive number of prostitutes, some underaged. The guy was going through multiple of them in one day, and often not seeing the same ones twice. Also it somewhat bothers me that his real ticket to wealth and source of funds was helping billionaires set up tax shelters in the Bahamas and defraud the US Treasury of literally billions of dollars, and no one cares about that part.
As a moral/ethical matter, who cares if he hired prostitutes for himself versus for anyone else? It's not better or worse. Why does it matter whether he "trafficked", that's basically a fake crime we've made up so that their are federal charges for what are otherwise not federal crimes, bc of the over state lines aspect. The only reason people care about the trafficking aspect is bc they're just so goddamn thirsty to find out what other celebs paid teenaged hookers, it's like the ultimate true crime soap opera for them.
The other reason Epstein is a real bastard is bc the guy had hundreds of millions yet only paid these girls like $200 each to have to touch his old ass. What a cheap bastard.
Rich guys who go to jail and think they're losing everything are the number one type of people who kill themselves, that's totally to be expected. Idk why they edited the tape, that part is fishy, but it definitely isn't surprising he'd kill himself.
For conservative Democrat cluelessness (perhaps deliberate?) on how to play Epstein, see Nancy Pelosi, who calls the controversy "a distraction" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aueq94bF280
Instead Pelosi distracts us with Alcatraz, remember when Trump brought that up? That's right, everybody's forgotten about that obvious Trumpian distraction! So what does Pelosi do, but remind us to pay attention to this distraction, to steer us away from a focus upon an issue with the potential to sever Trump's links with much of the MAGA machine that carried him into the White House! Bravo!
The "regular" Democrats don't want to politically destroy MAGA and Trump. They only seek to adapt themselves to Trump/MAGA, because that is what their capitalist donors are doing. I've yet to hear one of these conservative Democrats commit to shutting off ICE funding should they get control of the House - have you?
"Can we finally see how MAGA ends?" Haven't had time yet to read the article but the title makes me lower the article's importance on my to do" list.
MAGA won't end (unless that's a short cut for Trumpism ending). Working people know the real world: they have to survive and make enough money to keep surviving. You might take a listen to Hank Williams Junior singing "A Country Boy Can Survive. (Yeah, I hear you shout "yuck" form here.) "We're from north California and south Alabam' And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck, and run a trotline And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive". MAGA will always continue. They may quite down until they find another man worthy of leading them, but they won't end.
MAGA was optimistic that Trump could solve some of the issues they saw. Were willing to give him a lot of "people power", were willing to let a lot of issues slide to get illegal immigrant issue and out-of-control wokism resolved. And, he may still do those things, but it may be a lot uglier than many MAGA people can accept. What is ending is the hope that Trump is worthy of leading them. That's the end of Trumpism, not MAGA.
FYI: What really killed Trumpism was Trump's unwillingness to keep his "to do" list small. That, and his inability to control his temper. (Maybe he is just showing signs of aging: he doesn't have the stamina and energy to handle all the cans of worms he has opened. )
MY GOD WHY DON'T YOU PEOPLE ACTUALLY JUST READ ABOUT THESE THINGS BEFORE ASKING PEOPLE IN COMMENTS SECTIONS
Have you heard of Google? ChatGPT? How did you find this website if you're unfamiliar with the internet? How did you even learn to read in the first place?
"There is practically no evidence that he was trafficking underage girls to other men, for purposes of blackmail or otherwise"
Not so. Greenwald summarized it well yesterday - there may not be definitive proof, but there is certainly plenty of circumstantial evidence.
https://greenwald.locals.com/post/7111739/is-there-evidence-of-epsteins-ties-to-israel-yes-ample-brazils-chief-censor-orders-rumble-to-ba
I can't get past the paywall, what is the evidence he's trafficked underage girls?
He might've been connected to intelligence agencies and helped to blackmail people. But if he did, the simpler explanation is that it was for financial issues, not pedo stuff. No girls except one mentally ill unreliable witness has ever claimed to have been trafficked to other men
Much Greenwald's article builds the circumstantial evidence for the intelligence connections. If you grant the intelligence connections are likely, and acknowledge that honey pot schemes have been part of the playbook for decades, it becomes the most likely way for him to help blackmail. The was also the sheer volume of girls involved, more than 1000 some sources have claimed.
Does he have an explanation for why only one unreliable girl has claimed to have been trafficked to other men? Many, many have come forth to testify, anonymously or publicly, against Epstein. When you take into account none have against other men, I think Occam's Razor turns the other way
He doesn't make the case, but only Epstein and Maxwell were on trail. My understanding is the government made a limited case on purpose.
This is paywalled so it's not worth anything.
In what you quote, Hanania's comma is doing a lot of heavy lifting for the careless reader.
The article you link concerns Epstein's connection to Israel, not the claim that he was sex trafficking to other men. It wouldn't be at all surprising if Epstein had dealings with Israel or with pro-Israel groups given that he was so closely associated with so many rich Zionists. But that doesn't provide any evidence for the sex trafficking claim.
This says he had intelligence connections, not that he trafficked underage girls to other men.
The intelligence connections and other things suggest the honey trap.
If Epstein didn’t commit suicide then WHO KILLED EPSTEIN?
Why did his procurer get 20 years in the slammer if there was "no evidence". Woman in jail. Man who killed himself in 60 seconds in a "secure cell" when the cameras watching him magically went dead. Those two things alone are enough to convince any reasonable person that "These are not the drones you're looking for" is the meme for whoever is trying to hide whatever.
She is in jail for procuring girls *for Epstein* not for anyone else.
I don't think it's reasonable to rule out even mentioning Russiagate. Ten years is not far enough in the past to say Democrats are completely immune from conspiracy theories.
If Democrats had one conspiracy theory a decade ago and Trump has been posting on a weekly or daily basis even crazier conspiracies, and conservatism is dominated by a nonstop stream of conspiracies, then yes the MAGAs have lost all the high ground here. I don’t even believe that Russiagate is anywhere near as crazy as what MAGAs believe in but you don’t even need to get into that to make the point.
You're right to argue about how vulnerable the Right is to conspiratorial thinking, but there are left-wing conspiracies (CIA dumping cocaine in African American communities, Ronald Reagan negotiating with terrorists for hostage releases, etc.).
I agree it's not an equivalence. You just should have said that instead of saying that Dems are immune.
The Russia investigation was absolutely legitimate and found dozens of contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian agents and cutouts. The Republican led Senate investigation reached the same conclusion. Most of the media reporting, such as about the Trump Tower meeting that Trump originally denied happened, then helped Don Jr. craft a response for, turned out to be accurate.
Comparing that to all the right wing influencers making up theories — not to mention Trump’s personally selected VP, FBI director, Chief of Staff and Attorney General — is absurd.
I guess I'm open to reading an article about it if you have one. Some pretty important theories that were taken seriously at the time seem highly unlikely to be true.
Russian hackers used a phishing email to obtain and leak internal documents of the Clinton campaign, in the belief that this would benefit Trump's electoral chances. Trump publicly asked Russia to hack and leak Clinton's "missing emails". Putin publicly said he was interfering in the US election. Whether there was a direct connection or not, investigating this is not a conspiracy theory.
Maybe not, I would have to read more into it. But would you acknowledge Trump is unlikely to have been a Russian asset since the 1980s?
If he is I have not seen credible evidence of it. I don't recall that being something that was speculated on. The most dubious thing I remember of the time was the Steele dosier thing, which was generally reported as coming from an unreliable source. Naturally this was seized as being representative of the entirety of the claims of Russia influence. Then again, I do my best not to listen to nutritional supplement salesmen, so maybe I'm misremembering.
Search "What if Trump has Been a Russian Asset since 1987?", Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine
Wow. Straight up lies. You cannot believe for a minute that if there was evidence that Donald Trump did something illegal in the presence of Jeffrey Epstein, and it was known by the Democrats, and it wouldn’t be on the front page of the New York Times every single day for the past five years.The Democrats tried to kill him, jail him, bankrupt him, spread lies about his collusion with Russia… If they had evidence, we would know about it. Your TDS is so unbecoming.
How does the fact that the Epstein/Trump friendship broke up in 2007, when Trump banned Epstein from Mar A Lago for hitting on a member’s daughter, fit into your analysis?
Another conspiracy theory bigger than Trump is the Covid vaccine. This is why Trump never tried to take credit for it.
Trump HAS bragged about it. Just look at his Truth Social:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109574742056886245
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111064044350853926
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109043052662798997
Forgive me if I'm missing something. I watched Richard's conversation with Michael Tracey (I couldn't read the articles linked in #1 behind a paywall) and did not see several elements of this entire debacle addressed. Why would Bondi claim that the DOJ has thousands of videos of evidence involving hundreds to thousands of victims if Epstein was not trafficking these victims for others? If Epstein and Maxwell acted alone or within a very small circle, how and why did Epstein accrue so much wealth and influence among some of the famous people in the world? Would that not pointlessly draw a lot of attention to himself for no reason?
To me, the least baseless and "conspiratorial" position with the current evidence is that there was a trafficking ring involving many influential people. However, Epstein purposefully associated himself with obviously innocent figures, such as Stephen Hawking, to obfuscate this and create a serious dilemma for any investigators who would need to determine who around him did and did not engage in any impropriety, thereby disincentivizing them to prosecute anyone.
As far as I can tell, Bondi was an idiot
He got his wealth scamming rich people. You can look up Gregor McGregor or FireFest; charismatic nobodies scamming the rich for massive sums has gone on for centuries.
The real thing that was pointless was Epstein sexually assaulting girls. We have tons of testimony from victims he brought them to his home and made them have sex with him while they were as young as 14. If he was some Machiavellian sex plotter, he wouldn't have been rapping them himself en masse
I'm agnostic on whether Epstein was a sex trafficker, but I don't know why the fact that Epstein himself raped teenage girls is a disqualifying piece of information for him to find other people who wanted to rape teenage girls and provide them.
Don't get high on your own supply doesn't seem to be a real thing in other segments of life, so I don't get why people believe it about criminal activities.
He was clearly an insane level sex addict/horndog, most of the witnesses involved in his prosecution said he was going through 3 girls every day. There's no question he bought sex and often from teenagers, for himself, just not great evidence he trafficked for others. As for all his money, it's pretty clear, he set up fake shell companies in other countries and tax havens and crafted various scams to help billionaires not pay taxes. Rich people pay good money for that. that's where it came from. Leon Black paid him a few hundred million, but Epstein set of tax shelters so that he didn't have to pay TWO BILLION in taxes…a hundred million in fees is chump change compared to that.
I agree there's no good evidence he trafficked girls to others rather than just being an insane level sex addict himself he hired a massive number of prostitutes, some underaged. The guy was going through multiple of them in one day, and often not seeing the same ones twice. Also it somewhat bothers me that his real ticket to wealth and source of funds was helping billionaires set up tax shelters in the Bahamas and defraud the US Treasury of literally billions of dollars, and no one cares about that part.
As a moral/ethical matter, who cares if he hired prostitutes for himself versus for anyone else? It's not better or worse. Why does it matter whether he "trafficked", that's basically a fake crime we've made up so that their are federal charges for what are otherwise not federal crimes, bc of the over state lines aspect. The only reason people care about the trafficking aspect is bc they're just so goddamn thirsty to find out what other celebs paid teenaged hookers, it's like the ultimate true crime soap opera for them.
The other reason Epstein is a real bastard is bc the guy had hundreds of millions yet only paid these girls like $200 each to have to touch his old ass. What a cheap bastard.
Rich guys who go to jail and think they're losing everything are the number one type of people who kill themselves, that's totally to be expected. Idk why they edited the tape, that part is fishy, but it definitely isn't surprising he'd kill himself.
For conservative Democrat cluelessness (perhaps deliberate?) on how to play Epstein, see Nancy Pelosi, who calls the controversy "a distraction" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aueq94bF280
Instead Pelosi distracts us with Alcatraz, remember when Trump brought that up? That's right, everybody's forgotten about that obvious Trumpian distraction! So what does Pelosi do, but remind us to pay attention to this distraction, to steer us away from a focus upon an issue with the potential to sever Trump's links with much of the MAGA machine that carried him into the White House! Bravo!
The "regular" Democrats don't want to politically destroy MAGA and Trump. They only seek to adapt themselves to Trump/MAGA, because that is what their capitalist donors are doing. I've yet to hear one of these conservative Democrats commit to shutting off ICE funding should they get control of the House - have you?
"Can we finally see how MAGA ends?" Haven't had time yet to read the article but the title makes me lower the article's importance on my to do" list.
MAGA won't end (unless that's a short cut for Trumpism ending). Working people know the real world: they have to survive and make enough money to keep surviving. You might take a listen to Hank Williams Junior singing "A Country Boy Can Survive. (Yeah, I hear you shout "yuck" form here.) "We're from north California and south Alabam' And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck, and run a trotline And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive". MAGA will always continue. They may quite down until they find another man worthy of leading them, but they won't end.
MAGA was optimistic that Trump could solve some of the issues they saw. Were willing to give him a lot of "people power", were willing to let a lot of issues slide to get illegal immigrant issue and out-of-control wokism resolved. And, he may still do those things, but it may be a lot uglier than many MAGA people can accept. What is ending is the hope that Trump is worthy of leading them. That's the end of Trumpism, not MAGA.
FYI: What really killed Trumpism was Trump's unwillingness to keep his "to do" list small. That, and his inability to control his temper. (Maybe he is just showing signs of aging: he doesn't have the stamina and energy to handle all the cans of worms he has opened. )
If there are no prosecutable crimes, what was Ms Maxwell convicted of?
MY GOD WHY DON'T YOU PEOPLE ACTUALLY JUST READ ABOUT THESE THINGS BEFORE ASKING PEOPLE IN COMMENTS SECTIONS
Have you heard of Google? ChatGPT? How did you find this website if you're unfamiliar with the internet? How did you even learn to read in the first place?
She trafficked girls to Epstein. Four victims testified in court and seven gave statements for the sentencing.