The congressional order requiring the Department of
Justice to release the Epstein files was billed as a victory
for transparency last month when it was signed into law.
Since the files started being released, a day laid in small
increments and with heavy redactions, it's become a
chaotic spectacle of incompetence, technical failure,
and selective disclosure, making the most unhinged conspiracy
theorists look reasonable. On Christmas Eve, it was
announced that additional files had been uncovered and that it
would likely take a few more weeks for the full data set to
be released. The scale of the omission is
staggering. To date, the Department of
Justice has released just 11,000 and 34 document.
Yet with this sudden request for delay, the department admitted
that it has uncovered over a million additional records that
still need to be reviewed. This admission is a humiliating
reversal for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who in February told
the public that the relevant files were sitting on her desk
and ready for review. This pivot, from ready to
release to too much to process confirms the worst fears of
transparency advocates. Simple math dictates that if a
million documents remain hidden, the public has seen perhaps 1%
of the total cash. Rather than the flood of clarity
Congress demanded, we've received a muddy trickle, A
disparity that critics argue amounts to a deliberate failure
to comply with the law. The incompetence was absolute.
Ordinary members of the public quickly discovered that some
redacted text could be revealed by simply copying and pasting
the document into a different format.
These digital slip UPS exposed not sensitive victim data, but
financial records and details that the law explicitly forbade
the DOJ from hiding, proving that the censorship was often
protecting reputations, not victim.
Beyond the political theatre, genuine scandals have emerged
from the recently released files that contradict the official
narrative that we've been fed for months.
Administration officials like Attorney General Pam Bondi and
FBI Director Kash Patel insisted that there was no client list
and nothing to see in the files. Patel went further, telling
Congress that there's no credible information, none that
Epstein trafficked women to others.
The documents prove otherwise. Buried within the release is a
revelation that federal agents identified and attempted to
contact 10 potential Co conspirators immediately after
Epstein's 2019 arrest. While most names remain
redacted, the existence of this list confirms that suspects
beyond Epstein and Shalane Maxwell have been on the FBIS
radar for years. Equally damning is the
revelation of catastrophic institutional failure.
We now know the FBI was alerted to Epstein's abuse as far back
as 1996, when Maria Farmer reported that the then 43 year
old financier had stolen nude photos of her sisters aged just
12 and 16. The FBI report notes that
Epstein was believed to have sold the pictures to potential
buyers, a chilling detail that hints at the a very trafficking
network Patel denied existed. These revelations, importantly
shatter a lingering myth perpetuated by commentators like
Megyn Kelly, that Epstein was merely a Playboy who took
advantage of willing teenagers dazzled by his wealth and
celebrity connections. The files depict a much nastier,
more dangerous reality, a predator who threatened to burn
down a teenage victim's house if she spoke out.
And who's his victims were? Often small children, not party
girls. Then there are the bizarre
anomalies that feel pulled from a tabloid fever dream.
Buried in the cache was a suicide note purportedly written
by Epstein to disgrace gymnastics doctor Larry Nasser,
containing grotesque claims about the US president.
The Department of Justice has officially labeled the letter's
contents unfounded and false, and there are many reasons to
believe that it might be a hoax. But they released it anyway, a
decision that's only fuelled the very speculation they seem to
want to discourage. To tell the full story, we have
to look far beyond the government's muddy trickle of
information. We'll combine the Department of
Justice files with new data and photos released by the House
Oversight Committee and groundbreaking reporting from
the New York Times. While the FBI sat on its hands,
reporters were digging through archives interviewing people who
had worked with Epstein and knew him socially to reveal the true
source of his wealth, exposing him not as a financial wizard,
but instead as a relentless scammer who built his empire on
a lifetime of frauds, Ponzi like schemes, and the betrayal of
friends. The contrast between the
investigative success of the press and the abject failure of
the state is damning. The government has all the tools
needed to uncover the truth, the power to compel testimony, the
ability to track the movement of every cent through the banking
system, and full access to the IRS tax records.
Yet it was journalists, not federal agents, who connected
the dots. It's crazy that the ball has
been dropped like this on such a high profile case.
And it's no wonder that conspiracy theories have
bloomed, because as the files now prove, an actual conspiracy
existed. Today, I'm going to break down
the new data releases in three parts.
First, we'll examine the new evidence of Co conspirators and
the specific warnings that the FBI ignored in the 1990s.
Second, we'll contrast the government's chaotic, redacted
dump with the forensic accounting done by journalists
that finally explains the mechanics of Epstein's wealth.
And finally, we'll ask the question that the DOJ is
seemingly desperate to avoid. If the government knew in 1996
what Jeffrey Epstein was up to, why did it take 23 years and a
billion dollars in stolen money to stop him?
For months, the official line from Washington had been that
the conspiracy began and ended with Jeffrey Epstein and his
jailed accomplice, Elaine Maxwell.
The administration insisted that the circle of guilt was a closed
loop. In sworn testimony to Congress,
FBI Director Kash Patel was unequivocal.
Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to
besides himself? Himself, there is no credible
information. None.
If there were, I would bring the case yesterday.
This claim strained credulity from the moment it was uttered.
The public has long known, thanks to leaks like the
birthday book, that Epstein did not operate in a vacuum.
But what was once strong suspicion is now documented
fact. The files prove unequivocally
that Patel's testimony was at best a catastrophic failure of
memory and at worst a lie. Buried in this weeks chaotic
document dump is a heavily redacted e-mail chain from July
2019, sent just hours after Epstein arrest.
In it, an FBI agent asks A colleague for an update on the
status of the 10 Co conspirators.
This is not speculation, it's a time stamped federal record.
The e-mail confirms that from the very first moments of the
2019 investigation, the FBI had identified 10 specific targets.
So who were they and why were they never charged?
The DOJ has redacted 7 of the 10 names, citing privacy concerns,
A justification the new law explicitly forbids for anyone
other than victims. However, three of the names were
left visible. Jelaine Maxwell, Jean Luc
Brunel, the French modelling agent who died in prison
awaiting trial, and Leslie Wexner, the billionaire retail
tycoon behind Victoria's Secret. Wexner's inclusion is explosive.
For decades, he was Epstein's primary patron, entrusting the
former math teacher with total control over his billions.
While Wexner severed his financial ties in 2007 and
claims that he was never a target of the federal
investigation, his presence on a verified FBI suspect list
suggests that agents believe that the money trail and the
abuse trail were intertwined. The most chilling evidence of a
wider conspiracy comes not from 2019, but from 1996.
Included in the files is a police report filed by Maria
Farmer, an artist who worked for Epstein.
She told the FBI explicitly that Epstein and Maxwell had stolen
nude photographs of her younger sisters, aged 12 and 16, that
she had taken for her own personal artwork.
Crucially, the report notes that Epstein was believed to have
sold the pictures to potential buyers.
This single sentence destroys the lone wolf narrative.
If Epstein and Maxwell were selling photographs like this,
then there were buyers. And if the FBI knew about
potential buyers of this type of material in 1996 and Co
conspirators in 2019, the question is no longer if others
were involved. The question is why the most
powerful law enforcement agency in the world decided to stop
looking for them. While the Co conspirators list
points to a cold heart cover up, much of the release resembles a
hall of mirrors, a chaotic junk drawer of evidence that mixes
genuine leads with bizarre anomalies.
Take the suicide note. Buried in the cache is a letter
purportedly written by Epstein to Larry Nasser, the disgraced
gymnastics doctor. Nasser is a true monster who was
convicted of abusing more than 150 women and girls and
sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Some estimates of the number of victims goes beyond 300.
Dear Lane, the note reads. As you know by now, I've taken
the short route home. Good luck.
We shared one thing, our love and caring for young ladies and
the hope they'd reach their full potential.
Our president also shares our love of young nubile girls.
It then makes a lewd reference to the president's treatment of
women and signs off. Life is unfair, yours, Jay
Epstein. While the existence of a letter
to Larry Nasser has been public knowledge since 2023, when The
Associated Press reported on a return to sender envelope
turning up in the jail's mail room, there are compelling
reasons to doubt the documents. Authenticity.
First. Investigators have never
established a clear link between Epstein and Nasser.
So why would Epstein choose to send his final thoughts to a
stranger in a different prison rather than to a friend or
family Family member? Second, the letter was
postmarked 3 days after Epstein's death, which could
theoretically be explained by the delays inherent in the
prison mail inspection system. However, the markings indicate
it was mailed from Northern Virginia, hundreds of miles from
the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Manhattan, where
Epstein died. Even if the note was written by
Epstein, he would have known that it would be read by the
prison mailing system and may be given extra attention after his
death. So even if authentic, the note
could still have been a final act of revenge on his old friend
Trump. The DOJ may have dismissed the
note as a forgery based on handwriting analysis, but it's
contradictions guarantee it'll be dissected by conspiracy
theorists for decades to come. It feeds the conspiracy that
there was a celebrity ring of abusers who were all in touch
with each other. But it also contradicts the
conspiracy that many believe that Epstein was murdered in
prison. To silence him, the Department
of Justice took the unusual step of enabling the letter unfounded
and false upon release, yet included it anyway.
Then there's the bizarre footage of Epstein appearing to choke
himself in his prison cell, a video that circulated online for
years and is now formally included in the files simply
because someone emailed it to the FBI asking if it was real.
But if the noise is distracting, the silence regarding the
president is deafening. Administration officials have
repeatedly claimed that they're prioritizing transparency, yet
the process has been dogged by accusations of bias.
Internal documents reveal that the FBI referred to the effort
as the Special Redaction Project, an initiative that
racked up over $850,000 in overtime costs in a single week
back in March. So who knows what the total cost
of the redactions has come to buy now, but the return on that
investment appears to be a sophisticated form of
obstruction. Upon release, users reported a
bizarre technical anomaly. Searching the digital files for
Trump yielded almost 0 results, making it look like the
president didn't appear in the files at all.
People eventually worked out that his name could only be
found if you searched for Trump with a space at the end, a
coding glitch that rendered him invisible to the general public.
Meanwhile, specific files, including a photo of a desk in
Epstein's home displaying 2 pictures of the president, were
quietly removed from an online database and then re uploaded
only after a public outcry. Perhaps the most telling was the
DO JS framing. When releasing the documents,
the department included an unusually specific disclaimer
warning that the files contained untrue and sensationalist claims
about President Trump. No such warning was offered for
the other well known figures mentioned in the files.
And then there's the incompetence.
At least 550 pages were released entirely blacked out, a move
that critics argue violates the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
But some of the censorship was as porous as it was
heavy-handed, ordinary members of the public quickly
discovered. But some redactions were merely
black bars placed over live text, which could be revealed by
copy pasting the document into a text file.
These hacks didn't all expose sensitive victim data, which was
supposed to be what was being redacted, but instead financial
records and details about Epstein's estate, proving that
the censorship was designed to shield the powerful from
embarrassment rather than to protect victims from further
harm. If the technical failures were
absolute, the political weaponization was strategic.
But before we dissect the politics, we must address the
sheer scope of the orbit. The files feature a surreal cast
of characters that spans the entire spectrum of the global
elite. The names dragged into the
sunlight range from rock stars like Mick Jagger, Diana Ross and
Michael Jackson. A Jagger was photographed with
Clinton and a redacted image of a woman.
While he hasn't made any statements about the release,
there's no suggestion that he was involved with or aware of
any of the actions of Bill Clinton or Jeffrey Epstein.
There were Hollywood A listers in the files like Kevin Spacey
and Leonardo DiCaprio, Titans of science and industry like Bill
Gates, Gates and Noam Chomsky, and even David Copperfield, the
magician, the creepiest style of entertainer.
It's important to state clearly that appearing in a photograph
with Jeffrey Epstein are flying on his jet does not inherently
imply criminal wrongdoing. For many, Epstein was simply a
fixture of the social circuit, a wealthy donor who's sinister
reality was hidden in plain sight.
But for others, the association was far deeper.
Former President Bill Clinton featured heavily in the first
batch of release documents. While the files contain no
evidence of specific crimes, they confirm a long, comfortable
friendship that Clinton has spent years trying to downplay.
He's seen relaxing in hot tubs and swimming with Elaine
Maxwell, images that are embarrassing, if not indictable.
Yet for the current White House, embarrassing was not enough.
In a move that stripped away any tense of impartiality, a deputy
press secretary tweeted a photo from the files showing Clinton
with Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and three small children.
The children's faces were redacted, implying that they
were possible victims. The implication was a lie.
The photo had been taken at a public charity event, and the
children belonged to Jackson and Diana Ross.
The fact that the White House deputy press secretary felt the
need to manufacture a scandal when the reality of Clinton's
association with Epstein was already damaging enough speaks
volumes about how low political figures will go to discredit
each other. We're also left with the
question of whether prior administrations kept these files
sealed not to protect justice, but because Epstein was a
bipartisan embarrassment who compromised everyone he was
involved with. This question of protection then
brings us to Alexander Acosta, the former Labour secretary who
is long sad at the centre of the Epstein saga's darkest theory.
As the prosecutor who signed off on Epstein's sweetheart plea
deal in 2008, Acosta famously claimed he was told to back off
because Epstein belonged to intelligence and was above his
pay grade. He later denied saying this, but
if true, this suggests that for decades states the US government
didn't just ignore a predator, it shielded one.
The cost of that protection is made viscerally clear in new
photos released by the House Oversight Committee.
These images destroy, once again, the party girl myth once
and for all. They show young girls with lines
from the novel Lolita written in black marker across their
bodies, on their chests, feet and spines.
It's a grotesque display of branding the literary pretension
into evidence of systematic abuse.
While most of the press has been about Clinton and Trump, the
public figure who emerges most damaged by the new files is not
a politician but a Prince. Or at least a former Prince.
Welcome, peasants. This is diary of a professional
eminent Duke and orator. The documents about Andrew
contain what might be the closest thing to a smoking gun
in the entire release. An e-mail exchange between
Shalane Maxwell and the sender signed simply A, who has widely
been identified as Prince Andrew.
In the emails, the former Prince writes from Balmoral to ask
Maxwell if she has found too many new inappropriate friends.
Later discussing an upcoming trip to Peru.
Maxwell instructed and associate to organize 2 legged sightseeing
for the Prince, specifying that the women should be intelligent,
pretty, fun, and from good families.
The revelation that a member of the royal family was using
official travel budgets to procure women via Epstein and
Maxwell is a scandal that no amount of redaction can hide.
If the failure to investigate the sexual crimes was a tragedy,
the failure to investigate the financial crimes was a farce.
I made a whole video about this a while back.
Tracking the sources of Epstein's wealth would answer
many questions about him and his Co conspirators.
If there's anyone capable of working out how a high school
math teacher transformed into a billionaire, it should be the
Department of Justice. After all, the government
possesses the ultimate investigative toolkit, the power
to compel testimony, the ability to track the movement of every
cent through the global banking system, and full access to IRS
tax records. Yet in more than 40 years of
suspicious activity, federal agents failed to uncover the
answer to the most basic question of the Epstein saga.
Where did all the money come from?
It took a team of journalists from the New York Times digging
through dusty archives and interviewing forgotten
associates, financial victims and ex girlfriends to finally
dismantle the myth. I'll leave a link to the article
in the description as it's well worth a read.
As the journalist point out, for decades Epstein sold himself as
a financial Dr. to the ultra wealthy, A renegade genius who
could see patterns in the market that others missed, and an
expert in taxes who could even sell tax planning services to
people as financially sophisticated as private equity
tycoons. The Times revealed a much
grubbier reality. Epstein was no wizard.
He was instead a relentless scammer who built his empire on
a foundation of Ponzi like schemes, fraud and a systematic
betrayal of friends. He always seemed to know who to
RIP off and who it was more valuable to keep on as a friend.
He started his career at Bear Stearns in 1976, having been
hired by the firm's chairman, Ace Greenberg, specifically
because he fit the profile of what Greenberg called PSD.
Someone who was poor, smart and had a deep desire to become
rich. He rose quickly even after he
was caught lying about his education, claiming have degrees
from 2 separate colleges despite never graduating.
He basically treated his resume like a creative writing
assignment, and on Wall Street in the 70s, that was apparently
a passing grade. He got away with a lot of Bear
Stearns because his supervisors knew he was dating the
chairman's daughter and viewed him as protected.
Even still, his time on Wall Street didn't last.
He left in 1981 after he was caught breaking federal rules.
He had abused his expense account without consequence, but
he was finally cornered for lending money to a friend in
violation of regulations and funnelling lucrative hot IPO
shares to to a girlfriend. After the firm fined and
suspended him, he resigned. After leaving Wall Street,
Epstein told People that he was a bounty hunter who could track
down lost assets, but the reality was often just fraud.
In 1982, for instance, he convinced an acquaintance named
Martin Stroll to invest roughly 10% of his net worth, around
$450,000, into a crude oil deal. The money vanished and Epstein
essentially ghosted him, at one point sending Stroll a single
quart of oil as a mockery when he demanded proof of the
investment. He then moved on to partner with
Stephen Hoffenberg at a firm called Towers Financial, being
paid $25,000 a month as a consultant.
Hoffenberg would later claim that Epstein helped orchestrate
the massive Ponzi scheme there that defrauded investors of
nearly $500 million. Hoffenberg went to prison and
Epstein walked free. He also used the facade of high
stakes corporate rating to mask simple market manipulation.
In 1988, he and some partners executed a pump and dump
strategy with a chemical company called Pennwalt, driving up the
stock price with a takeover bid. They then sold their shares for
a large profit, but Epstein refused to return the investment
to the friends he had recruited to fund the deal, effectively
stealing their capital. His biggest source of wealth,
however, was retail billionaire Leslie Wexner.
Despite warnings from Wexner's own financial advisor, who told
the billionaire he smelled a rat, Epstein managed to gain
power of attorney over Wexner's entire fortune.
Wexner later claimed that Epstein misappropriated vast
sums of his money, which Epstein used to buy Mansion's planes and
perhaps most importantly, credibility.
He used his access to Wexner to open doors to the highest
corridors of power, infiltrating the Clinton White House and
sitting on boards for prestigious institutions like
Rockefeller University. The documents also show just how
close he got to the establishment through the people
he trusted to manage his estate. Newly released Justice
Department documents revealed that two of the biggest names in
finance and policy were named as executors in his wills.
Jess Staley, the former Barclay CEO, was listed as an executor
in wills from 2013 and 2014. This compounds the scrutiny that
Staley faced for being banned from the UK banking industry for
acting without integrity regarding his ties to Epstein.
Even Larry Summers, the former U.S.
Treasury Secretary, was named as a successor executor in the 2014
Well. While Summers claims he had
absolutely no knowledge of this and is deeply ashamed of the
association, his inclusion in the document highlights just how
effective Epstein's fraud really was.
In the end, Epstein didn't get rich because he was a market
genius. He got rich because regulators
looked the other way while he looted the accounts of those who
trusted him. If money was the fuel, the
destination was legitimacy. The New York Times investigation
makes it clear that Epstein didn't just want to be rich, he
wanted to be untouchable. And to do that, he needed to
embed himself so deeply in the establishment that no one would
dare question him. His most ambitious target was
the Clinton White House. In February 1993, just weeks
after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, Epstein walked into
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. alongside Leslie Wexner.
He didn't just show up empty handed, either.
Epstein had become a political donor, having contributed
$10,000 to help refurbish the White House, a donation that
secured him a spot at a reception with the press
president. Obviously, nowadays presidential
meetings are much more expensive and paid for in crypto.
Money was only part of the equation.
He also used people as currency. The Times reports that Epstein
leveraged a connection with Lynn Forrester, a successful
executive who would later marry into the Rothschild family.
Epstein reportedly convinced her that he could help her in her
divorce settlement, insisting that he was the only one who
could protect her assets. Through Forrester, who was an
appointee to the White House Advisory Commission, Epstein had
his foot in the door. The strategy worked, and by
1995, Epstein was close enough to the president that Clinton
wrote a personal Get well soon. No to Epstein's mother
scrolling. Hang in there.
On a yellow posted note that Epstein kept, once he had
political access, he aimed for social prestige, setting his
sights on the Rockefeller family.
Using his foundation, funded largely by other people's money,
Epstein began donating heavily to Rockefeller University and
the Trilateral Commission, buying himself a seat at the
table. In 1995, David Rockefeller
welcomed Epstein to the board of Rockefeller University.
He parlayed this into yet another lie, telling people that
he managed money for the Rockefellers, a claim that the
families actual financial advisors say was completely
false. Perhaps the most strategic
relationship he purchased was with the legal scholar Alan
Dershowitz. In 1996, Epstein met Dershowitz
in Martha's Vineyard, dropping names of Harvard elites like
Larry Summers. He worked hard to ingratiate
himself, even flying Dershowitz to Ohio to a birthday party for
Les Wexner. But the Times uncovered A
transaction that was far more significant than a party invite.
Epstein had convinced a hedge fund manager to let Dershowitz
invest in his fund. When the fund suffered massive
losses and wiped out Dershowitz's investment, Epstein
stepped in. He bullied the fund manager into
making Dershowitz whole, threatening to pull Wexner's $30
million investment from the fund if the fund manager didn't sort
it out. The fees on Wexner's investment
more than covered the cost of making Dershowitz whole, so it
went through. It was a masterstroke of
manipulation. By using Wexner's money as
leverage, Epstein ensured that a prominent legal mind owed him a
big favour. That favour paid dividends years
later when Epstein was finally arrested in 2005 in Florida,
Dershowitz helped engineer the now infamous sweetheart deal
that allowed Epstein to escape federal prosecution and serve a
light sentence. In hindsight, it wasn't just
generosity, it was an insurance policy paid for with stolen
money. In the end, when you step back
and look at the reality exposed by these documents, you're left
with a single uncomfortable realization.
Jeffrey Epstein wasn't a ghost in the machine.
He was a product of it. Perhaps the most haunting quote
in the New York Times investigation comes from Michael
Tenenbaum. Tenenbaum was the senior
executive at Bear Stearns who supervised Epstein's early rise
after Ace Greenberg hired him. Looking back on the man he
promoted, the college dropout who lied his way into a job and
then scammed his way into a fortune, Tenenbaum admitted.
I didn't realize that I was creating one of the monsters of
Wall Street. Of course, he didn't do it
alone. It took a village of
billionaires, bankers and politicians to raise this
monster. And that brings us to the
uncomfortable truth that I've spoken about in my previous
videos. The Epstein files are the
ultimate proof that there's a 2 tier justice system in the
United States. One set of rules for you and me,
and a completely different set for the well connected elites.
For years this scandal has been treated like a political
football, but the reality is that both parties had reasons to
keep these files under lock and key.
On the right, you had Republicans desperate to cover
up Donald Trump's 15 year friendship with a man he once
called a terrific guy. On the left, you had Democrats
willing to turn a blind eye to Bill Clinton's association with
Epstein, largely to protect Hillary Clinton when she was
seen as the future of the party. Today, the Clintons are seen as
being less politically relevant, and for that reason, the shield
is slipping. A newly released e-mail from a
federal prosecutor reveals that flight logs show Trump flew on
Epstein's private jet many more times than previously reported,
including on flights where Julaine Maxwell was a passenger.
We have to remember that what we're looking at today is just
the tip of the iceberg. The files that have been
released so far are only a fraction of the total evidence.
We also need to ask serious questions about the redactions
that are in place. Are these documents being
blacked out to protect victims, or are they being blacked out to
protect the personal reputations of important people?
There is a final bitter irony buried in the files from the US
Virgin Islands. In 1999, when Epstein was
applying for the tax breaks that would save him millions.
He was was asked if he would consider teaching a course at
the local university. Epstein replied that he would
love to. He said that his priority would
be to educate young people on the ethics of business.
He told the Commission the ethics of business is very
difficult nowadays. Epstein teaching a course like
this is a little bit like the iceberg teaching a course on
maritime safety for Jeffrey Epstein.
Ethics weren't difficult. They were non existent.
And until we see the rest of these files and until something
is done about the two tier justice system that protected
them, the story isn't really over.
Thanks for tuning into this week's podcast, with special
thanks to our supporters on Patreon whose financial support
keeps this going. Have a great week and talk to
you again soon. Bye, yeah.